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Title: Jan of the Windmill

Author: Juliana Horatia Ewing

Release Date: May, 2004  [EBook #5601]
[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
[This file was first posted on July 18, 2002]

Edition: 10

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, JAN OF THE WINDMILL ***




This etext was produced by Les Bowler, St. Ives, Dorset.




JAN OF THE WINDMILL (A Story of the Plains)
by JULIANA HORATIA EWING.




DEDICATED TO MY DEAR SISTER MARGARET.



CONTENTS.

Chapter I. The windmiller's wife.--Strangers.--Ten shillings a
week.--The little Jan.

Chapter II. The miller's calculations.--His hopes and fears.--The
nurse-boy.--Calm.

Chapter III. The windmiller's words come true.--The red shawl.--In
the clouds.--Nursing v. pig-minding.--The round-house.--The miller's
thumb.

Chapter IV. Black as slans.--Vair and voolish.--The miller and his
man.

Chapter V. The pocket-book and the family bible.--Five pounds'
reward.

Chapter VI. George goes courting.--George as an enemy.--George as a
friend.--Abel plays schoolmaster.--The love-letter.--Moerdyk.--The
miller-moth.--An ancient ditty.

Chapter VII. Abel goes to school again.--Dame Datchett.--A column of
spelling.--Abel plays moocher.--The miller's man cannot make up his
mind.

Chapter VIII. Visitors at the mill.--A windmiller of the third
generation.--Cure for whooping-cough.--Miss Amabel Adeline Ammaby.--
Doctors disagree.

Chapter IX. Gentry born.--Learning lost.--Jan's bedfellow.--Amabel.

Chapter X. Abel at home.--Jan objects to the miller's man.--The
alphabet.--The Cheap Jack.--"Pitchers".

Chapter XI. Scarecrows and men.--Jan refuses to "make Gearge."--
Uncanny.--"Jan's off."--The moon and the clouds.

Chapter XII. The white horse.--Comrogues.--Moerdyk.--George confides
in the Cheap Jack--with reservation.

Chapter XIII. George as a moneyed man.--Sal.--The "White Horse."--
The wedding.--The windmiller's wife forgets, and remembers too late.

Chapter XIV. Sublunary art.--Jan goes to school.--Dame Datchett at
home.--Jan's first school scrape.--Jan defends himself.

Chapter XV. Willum gives Jan some advice.--The clock face.--The
hornet and the Dame.--Jan draws pigs.--Jan and his patrons.--Kitty
Chuter.--The fight.--Master Chuter's prediction.

Chapter XVI. The mop.--The shop.--What the Cheap Jack's wife had to
tell.--What George withheld.

Chapter XVII. The miller's man at the mop.--A lively companion.--Sal
loses her purse.--The recruiting sergeant.--The pocket-book twice
stolen.--George in the King's Arms.--George in the King's service.--
The letter changes hands, but keeps its secret.

Chapter XVIII. Midsummer holidays.--Child fancies.--Jan and the pig-
minder.--Master Salter at home.--Jan hires himself out.

Chapter XIX. The blue coat.--Pig-minding and tree-studying.--Leaf-
paintings.--A stranger.--Master Swift is disappointed.

Chapter XX. Squire Ammaby and his daughter.--The Cheap Jack does
business once more.--The white horse changes masters.

Chapter XXI. Master Swift at home.--Rufus.--The ex-pig-minder.--Jan
and the schoolmaster.

Chapter XXII. The parish church.--Rembrandt.--The snow scene.--
Master Swift's autobiography.

Chapter XXIII. The white horse in clover.--Amabel and her
guardians.--Amabel in the wood.--Bogy.

Chapter XXIV. The paint-box.--Master Linseed's shop.--The new sign-
board.--Master Swift as Will Scarlet.

Chapter XXV. Sanitary inspectors.--The pestilence.--The parson.--The
doctor.--The squire and the schoolmaster.--Desolation at the
windmill.--The second advent.

Chapter XXVI. The beasts of the village.--Abel sickens.--The good
shepherd.--Rufus plays the philanthropist.--Master Swift sees the
sun rise.--The death of the righteous.

Chapter XXVII. Jan has the fever.--Convalescence in Master Swift's
cottage.--The squire on demoralization.

Chapter XXVIII. Mr. Ford's client.--The history of Jan's father.--
Amabel and Bogy the Second.

Chapter XXIX. Jan fulfils Abel's charge.--Son of the mill.--The
large-mouthed woman.

Chapter XXX. Jan's prospects, and Master Swift's plans.--Tea and
Milton.--New parents.--Parting with Rufus.--Jan is kidnapped.

Chapter XXXI. Screeving.--An old song.--Mr. Ford's client.--The
penny gaff.--Jan runs away.

Chapter XXXII. The baker.--On and on.--The church bell.--A
digression.--A familiar hymn.--The Boys' Home.

Chapter XXXIII. The business man and the painter.--Pictures and pot
boilers.--Cimabue and Giotto.--The salmon-colored omnibus.

Chapter XXXIV. A choice of vocations.--Recreation hour.--The bow-
legged boy.--Drawing by heart.--Giotto.

Chapter XXXV.  "Without character?"--The widow.--The bow-legged boy
takes service.--Studios and painters.

Chapter XXXVI. The miller's letter.--A new pot boiler sold.

Chapter XXXVII.  Sunshine after storm.

Chapter XXXVIII. A painter's education.--Master Chuter's port.--A
farewell feast.--The sleep of the just.

Chapter XXXIX. George again.--The painter's advice.--"Home-brewed"
at the Heart of Oak.--Jan changes the painter's mind.

Chapter XL. D'arcy sees Bogy.--The academy.--The painter's picture.

Chapter XLI. The detective.--The "Jook".--Jan stands by his mother's
grave.--His after history.

Chapter XLII. Conclusion.




JAN OF THE WINDMILL.




CHAPTER I. THE WINDMILLER'S WIFE.--STRANGERS.--TEN SHILLINGS A
WEEK.--THE LITTLE JAN.

Storm without and within?

So the windmiller might have said, if he had been in the habit of
putting his thoughts into an epigrammatic form, as a groan from his
wife and a growl of thunder broke simultaneously upon his ear,
whilst the rain fell scarcely faster than her tears.

It was far from mending matters that both storms were equally
unexpected.  For eight full years the miller's wife had been the
meekest of women.  If there was a firm (and yet, as he flattered
himself, a just) husband in all the dreary straggling district, the
miller was that man.  And he always did justice to his wife's good
qualities,--at least to her good quality of submission,--and would,
till lately, have upheld her before any one as a model of domestic
obedience.  From the day when he brought home his bride, tall,
pretty, and perpetually smiling, to the tall old mill and the ugly
old mother who never smiled at all, there had been but one will in
the household.  At any rate, after the old woman's death.  For
during her life-time her stern son paid her such deference that it
was a moot point, perhaps, which of them really ruled.  Between
them, however, the young wife was moulded to a nicety, and her voice
gained no more weight in the counsels of the windmill when the harsh
tones of the mother-in-law were silenced for ever.

The miller was one of those good souls who live by the light of a
few small shrewdities (often proverbial), and pique themselves on
sticking to them to such a point, as if it were the greater virtue
to abide by a narrow rule the less it applied.  The kernel of his
domestic theory was, "Never yield, and you never will have to," and
to this he was proud of having stuck against all temptations from a
real, though hard, affection for his own; and now, after working so
smoothly for eight years, had it come to this?

The miller scratched his bead, and looked at his wife, almost with
amazement.  She moaned, though he bade her be silent; she wept, in
spite of words which had hitherto been an effectual styptic to her
tears; and she met the commonplaces of his common sense with such
wild, miserable laughter, that he shuddered as he heard her.

Weakness in human beings is like the strength of beasts, a power of
which fortunately they are not always conscious.  Unless positively
brutal, you cannot well beat a sickly woman for wailing and weeping;
and if she will not cease for any lesser consideration, there seems
nothing for an unbending husband to do but to leave her to herself.

This the miller had to do, anyhow.  For he could only spare a
moment's attention to her now and then, since the mill required all
his care.

In a coat and hat of painted canvas, he had been in and out ever
since the storm began; now directing the two men who were working
within, now struggling along the stage that ran outside the
windmill, at no small risk of being fairly blown away.

He had reefed the sails twice already in the teeth of the blinding
rain.  But he did well to be careful.  For it was in such a storm as
this, five years ago "come Michaelmas," that the worst of windmill
calamities had befallen him,--the sails had been torn off his mill
and dashed into a hundred fragments upon the ground.  And such a
mishap to a seventy feet tower mill means--as windmillers well know-
-not only a stoppage of trade, but an expense of two hundred pounds
for the new sails.

Many a sack of grist, which should have come to him had gone down to
the watermill in the valley before the new sails were at work; and
the huge debt incurred to pay for them was not fairly wiped out yet.
That catastrophe had kept the windmiller a poor man for five years,
and it gave him a nervous dread of storms.

And talking of storms, here was another unreasonable thing.  The
morning sky had been (like the miller's wedded life) without a
cloud.  The day had been sultry, for the time of year unseasonably
so.  And, just when the miller most grudged an idle day, when times
were hard, when he was in debt,--for some small matters, as well as
the sail business,--and when, for the first time in his life, he
felt almost afraid of his own hearthstone, and would fain have been
busy at his trade, not a breath of wind had there been to turn the
sails of the mill.  Not a waft to cool his perplexed forehead, not
breeze enough to stir the short grass that glared for miles over
country flat enough to mock him with the fullest possible view of
the cloudless sky.  Then towards evening, a few gray flecks had
stolen up from the horizon like thieves in the dusk, and a mighty
host of clouds had followed them; and when the wind did come, it
came in no moderate measure, but brought this awful storm upon its
wings, which now raged as if all the powers of mischief had got
loose, and were bent on turning every thing topsy-turvy indoors and
out.

What made the winds and clouds so perverse, the clerk of the weather
best knows; but there was a reason for the unreasonableness of the
windmiller's wife.

She had lost her child, her youngest born, and therefore, at
present, her best beloved.  This girl-babe was the sixth of the
windmiller and his wife's children, the last that God gave them, and
the first that it had pleased Him to take away.

The mother had been weak herself at the time that the baby fell ill,
and unusually ill-fitted to bear a heavy blow.  Then her watchful
eyes had seen symptoms of ailing in the child long before the
windmiller's good sense would allow a fuss to be made, and expense
to be incurred about a little peevishness up or down.  And it was
some words muttered by the doctor when he did come, about not having
been sent for soon enough, which were now doing as much as any thing
to drive the poor woman frantic.  They struck a blow, too, at her
blind belief in the miller's invariable wisdom.  If he had but
listened to her in this matter, were it only for love's sake!  There
was something, she thought, in what that woman had said who came to
help her with the last offices,--the miller discouraged "neighbors,"
but this was a matter of decency,--that it was as foolish for a man
to have the say over babies and housework as it would be for his
wife to want her word in the workshop or the mill.

Perhaps a state of subjection for grown-up people does not tend to
make them reasonable, especially in their indignations.  The
windmiller's wife dared not, for her life, have told him in so many
words that she thought it would be for their joint benefit if he
would give a little more consideration to her wishes and opinions;
but from this suppressed idea came many sharp and peevish words at
this time, which, apart from their true source, were quite as
unreasonable and perverse as the miller held them to be.  Nor is
being completely under the control of another, self-control.  It may
be doubted if it can even do much to teach it.  The thread of her
passive condition having been, for the time, broken by grief, the
bereaved mother moaned and wailed, and rocked herself, and beat her
breast, and turned fiercely upon all interference, like some poor
beast in anguish.

She had clung to her children with an almost morbid tenderness, in
proportion as she found her worthy husband stern and cold.  A hard
husband sometimes makes a soft mother, and it is perhaps upon the
baby of the family that her repressed affections outpoured
themselves most fully.  It was so in this case, at any rate.  And
the little one had that unearthly beauty which is seen, or imagined,
about children who die young.  And the poor woman had suffered and
striven so for it, to have it and to keep it.  The more critical
grew its illness, the intenser grew her strength and resolution by
watchfulness, by every means her instinct and experience could
suggest, to fight and win the battle against death.  And when all
was vain, the maddening thought tortured her that it might have been
saved.

The miller had made a mistake, and it was a pity that he made
another on the top of it, with the best intentions.  He hurried on
the funeral, hoping that when "all was over" the mother would
"settle down."

But it was this crowning insult to her agony, the shortening of the
too brief time when she could watch by all that remained to her of
her child, which drove her completely wild.  She reproached him now
plainly and bitterly enough.  She would neither listen to reason nor
obey; and when--with more truth than taste--he observed that other
people lost children, and that they had plenty left, she laughed in
his face that wild laugh which drove him back to the mill and to the
storm.

How it raged!  The miller's wife was an uneducated, commonplace
woman enough, but, in the excited state of her nervous system, she
was as sensible as any poet of a kind of comforting harmony in the
wild sounds without; though at another time they would have
frightened her.

They did not disturb the children, who were in bed.  Four in the old
press-bed in the corner, and one in a battered crib, and one in the
narrow bed over which the coverlet was not yet green.

The day's work was over for her, though it was only just beginning
for the miller, and the mother had nothing to do but weep, and her
tears fell and fell, and the rain poured and poured.  That last
outburst had somewhat relieved her, and she almost wished her
husband would come back, as a flash of lightning dazzled her eyes,
and the thunder rattled round the old mill, as if the sails had
broken up again, and were falling upon the roof of the round-house.
All her senses were acute to-night, and she listened for the
miller's footsteps, and so, listening, in the lull after the
thunder, she heard another sound.  Wheels upon the road.

A pang shot through her heart.  Thus had the doctor's gig sounded
the night he came,--alas, too late!  How long and how intensely she
had listened for that!  She first heard it just beyond the mile-
stone.  This one must be a good bit on this side of it; up the hill,
in fact.  She could not help listening.  It was so like, so terribly
like!  Now it spun along the level ground.  Ah, the doctor had not
hurried so!  Now it was at the mill, at the door, and--it stopped.

The miller's wife rose to run out, she hardly knew why.  But in a
moment she checked herself, and went back to her seat.

"I be crazed, surely," said the poor woman, sitting down again.
"There be more gigs than one in the world, and folk often stops to
ask their way of the maester."

These travellers were a long time about the putting of such a simple
question, especially as the night was not a pleasant one to linger
out in.  The murmur of voices, too, which the woman overheard,
betokened a close conversation, in which the familiar drawl of the
windmiller's dialect blended audibly with that kind of clean-clipt
speaking peculiar to gentlefolk.

"He've been talking to master's five minute an' more," muttered the
miller's wife.  "What can 'ee want with un?"  The talking ceased as
she spoke, and the windmiller appeared, followed by a woman carrying
a young baby in her arms.

He was a ruddy man for his age at any time, but there was an extra
flush on his cheeks just now, and some excitement in his manner,
making him look as his wife was not wont to see him more than once a
year, after the Foresters' dinner at the Heart of Oak.  There was a
difference, too.  A little too much drink made the windmiller
peevish and pompous, but just now he spoke in a kindly, almost
conciliating tone.

"See, missus!  Let this good lady dry herself a bit, and get warm,
and the little un too."

A woman--ill-favored, though there was no positive fault to be found
with her features, except that the upper lip was long and cleft, and
the lower one very large--came forward with the child, and began to
take off its wraps, and the miller's wife, giving her face a hasty
wipe, went hospitably to help her.

"Tst! tst! little love!" she cried, gulping down a sob, due to her
own sad memories, and moving the cloak more tenderly than the woman
in whose arms the child lay.  "What a pair of dark eyes, then!  Is't
a boy or girl, m'm?"

"A boy," said a voice from the door, and the miller's wife, with a
suppressed shriek of timidity, became aware of a man whose entrance
she had not perceived, and to whom she dropped a hasty courtesy.

He was a man slightly above the middle height, whose slenderness
made him seem taller.  An old cloak, intended as much to disguise as
to protect him, did not quite conceal a faultlessness of costume
beneath it, after the fashion of the day.  Waistcoats of three
kinds, one within the other, a frilled shirt, and a well-adjusted
stock, were to be seen, though he held the ends of the old cloak
tightly across him, as the wind would have caught them in the
doorway.  He wore a countryman's hat, which seemed to suit him as
little as the cloak, and from beneath the brim his dark eyes glared
with a restless, dissatisfied look, and were so dark and so fierce
and bright that one could hardly see any other details of his face,
unless it were his smooth chin, which, either from habit or from the
stiffness of his stock, he carried strangely up in the air.

"Indeed, sir," said the windmiller's wife, courtesying, and setting
a chair, with her eyes wandering back by a kind of fascination to
those of the stranger; "be pleased to take a seat, sir."

The stranger sat down for a moment, and then stood up again.  Then
he seemed to remember that he still wore his hat, and removed it,
holding it stiffly before him in his gloved hands.  This displayed a
high, narrow head, on which the natural hair was worn short and
without parting, and a face which, though worn, was not old.  And,
for no definable reason, an impression stole over the windmiller's
wife that he, like her husband, had some wish to conciliate, which
in his case struggled hard with a very different kind of feeling,
more natural to him.

Then he took out a watch of what would now be called the old turnip
shape, and said impatiently to the miller, "Our time is short, my
good man."

"To be sure, sir," said the windmiller.  "Missus! a word with you
here."  And he led the way into the round-house, where his wife
followed, wondering.  Her wonder was not lessened when he laid his
hand upon her shoulder, and, with flushed cheek and a tone of
excitement that once more recalled the Foresters' annual meeting,
said, "We've had some sore times, missus, of late, but good luck
have come our way to-night."

"And how then, maester?" faltered his wife.

"That child," said the windmiller, turning his broad thumb
expressively towards the inner room, "belongs to folk that want to
get a home for un, and can afford to pay for un, too.  And the place
being healthy and out of the way, and having heard of our trouble,
and you just bereaved of a little un" -

"No! no! no!" shrieked the poor mother, who now understood all.  "I
COULDN'T, maester, 'tis unpossible, I could NOT.  Oh dear! oh dear!
isn't it bad enough to lose the sweetest child that ever saw light,
without taking in an outcast to fill that dear angel's place?  Oh
dear! oh dear!"

"And we behindhand in more quarters than one," continued the miller,
prudently ignoring his wife's tears and remonstrances, "and a dear
season coming on, and an uncertain trade that keeps a man idle by
days together, and here's ten shillings a week dropped into our
laps, so to speak.  Ten shillings a week--regular and sartin.  No
less now, and no more hereafter, the governor said.  Them were his
words."

"What's ten shilling a week to me, and my child dead and gone?"
moaned the mother, in reply.

"WHAT'S TEN SHILLINGS A WEEK TO YOU?" cried the windmiller, who was
fairly exasperated, in tones so loud that they were audible in the
dwelling room, where the stranger, standing by the three-legged
table, stroked his lips twice or thrice with his hand, as if to
smooth out a cynical smile which strove to disturb their decorous
and somewhat haughty compression.  "What's ten shilling a week to
you?  Why, it's food to you, and drink to you, and firing to you,
and boots for the children's feet.  Look here, my woman.  You've had
a sore affliction, but that's not to say you're to throw good luck
in the dirt for a whimsey.  This matter's settled."

And the miller strode back into the inner room, whilst his wife sat
upon a sack of barley, wringing her hands, and moaning, "I couldn't
do my duty by un, maester, I couldn't do my duty by un."

This she repeated at intervals, with her apron over her face, as
before; and then, suddenly aware that her husband had left her, she
hurried into the inner room to plead her own cause.  It was too
late.  The strangers had gone.  The miller was not there, and the
baby lay on the end of the press bedstead, wailing as bitterly as
the mother herself.

It had been placed there, with a big bundle of clothes by it, before
the miller came back, and he had found it so.  He found the stranger
too, with his hat on his head, and his cloak fastened, glancing from
time to time at the child, and then withdrawing his glance hastily,
and looking forcedly round at the meagre furnishing of the miller's
room, and then back at the little bundle on the bed, and away again.
The woman stood with her back to the press-bed, her striped shawl
drawn tightly round her, and her hands folded together as closely as
her long lip pressed the heavy one below.

"Is it settled?" asked the man.

"It is, sir," said the miller.  "You'll excuse my missus being as
she is, but it's fretting for the child we've a lost" -

"I understand, I understand," said the stranger, hastily.  He was
pulling back the rings of a silk netted purse, which he had drawn
mechanically from his pocket, and which, from some sudden start of
his, fell chinking on to the floor.  Whatever the thought was which
startled him, he thought it so sharply that he looked up in fear
that he had said it aloud.  But he had not spoken, and the miller
had no other expression than that of an eager satisfaction on his
face as the stranger counted out the gold by the flaring light of
the tallow candle.

"A quarter's pay in advance," he said briefly.  "It will be paid
quarterly, you understand."  After which, and checking himself in a
look towards the child, he went out, followed by the woman.

In the round-house he paused however, and looked back into the
meagre, dimly lighted room, where the little bundle upon the bed lay
weeping.  For a moment, a storm of irresolution seemed to seize him,
and then muttering, "It can't be helped for the present, it can't be
helped," he hurried towards the vehicle, in the back seat of which
the woman was already seated.

The driver touched his hat to him as he approached, and turned the
cushion, which he had been protecting from the rain.  The stranger
stumbled over the cloak as he got in, and, cursing the step, bade
the man drive like something which had no connection with driving.
But, as they turned, the windmiller ran out and after them.

"Stop, sir!" he cried.

"Well, what now?" said the stranger, sharply, as the horse was
pulled back on his haunches.

"Is it named?" gasped the miller.

"Oh, yes, all that sort of thing," was the impatient reply.

"And what name?" asked the miller.

"Jan.  J, A, N," said the stranger, shouting against the blustering
wind.

"And--and--the other name?" said the windmiller, who was now
standing close to the stranger's ear.

"What is yours?" he asked, with a sharp look of his dark eyes.

"Lake--Abel," said the windmiller.

"It is his also, henceforth," said the stranger, waving his hand, as
if to close the subject,--"Jan Lake.  Drive on, will you?"

The horse started forward, and they whirled away down the wet, gray
road.  And before the miller had regained his mill, the carriage was
a distant speck upon the storm.



CHAPTER II. THE MILLER'S CALCULATIONS.--HIS HOPES AND FEARS.--THE
NURSE-BOY.--CALM.

The windmiller went back to his work.  He had risked something over
this business in leaving the mill in the hands of others, even for
so short a time.  Then the storm abated somewhat.  The wind went
round, and blew with less violence a fine steady breeze.  The miller
began to think of going into the dwelling-room for a bit of supper
to carry him through his night's work.  And yet he lingered about
returning to his wife in her present mood.

He stuck the sharp point of his windmiller's candlestick {1} into a
sack that stood near, and drawing up a yellow canvas "sample bag "--
which served him as a purse--from the depths of his pocket, he began
to count the coins by the light of the candle.  He counted them over
several times with increasing satisfaction, and made several slow
but sure calculations as to the sum of ten shillings a week by the
month, the quarter, the half, and the whole year.  He then began
another set of calculations of a kind less pleasant, especially to
an honest man,--his debts.

"There's a good bit to the doctor for both times," he murmured; "and
there's the coffin, and something at the Heart of Oak for the
bearers, and a couple of bottles red wine there, too, for the
missus, when she were so bad.  And both the boys had new shoes to
follow in,--she would have it they should follow"-- And so on, and
so on, the windmiller ran up the list of his petty debts, and saw
his way to paying them.  Then he put the money back into the sample
bag, and folded it very neatly, and stowed it away.  And then he
drew near the inner door, and peeped into the room.

His poor wife seemed to be in no better case than before.  She sat
on the old rocking-chair, swinging backwards and forwards, and
beating her hands upon her knees in silence, and making no movement
to comfort the wailing little creature on the bed.

For the first time there came upon the windmiller a sense of the
fact that it is an uncertain and a rather dangerous game to drive a
desperate woman into a corner.  His missus was as soft-hearted a
soul as ever lived, and for her to sit unmoved by the weeping of a
neglected child was a proof that something was very far wrong
indeed.  One or two nasty stories of what tender-hearted women had
done when "crazed" by grief haunted him.  The gold seemed to grow
hot at the bottom of his pocket.  He wished he had got at the
stranger's name and address, in case it should be desirable to annul
the bargain.  He wished the missus would cry again, that silence was
worse than any thing.  He wished it did not just happen to come into
his head that her grandmother went "melancholy mad" when she was
left a young widow, and that she had had an uncle in business who
died of softening of the brain.

He wished she would move across the room and take up the child, with
an intensity that almost amounted to prayer.  And, in the votive
spirit which generally comes with such moments, he mentally resolved
that, if his missus would but "take to" the infant, he would humor
her on all other points just now to the best of his power.

A strange fulfilment often treads on the heels of such vows.  At
this moment the wailing of the baby disturbed the miller's eldest
son as he lay in the press-bed.  He was only seven years old, but he
had been nurse-boy to his dead sister during the brief period of her
health,--the more exclusively so, that the miller's wife was then
weakly,--and had watched by her sick cradle with a grief scarcely
less than that of the mother.  He now crept out and down the
coverlet to the wailing heap of clothes, with a bright, puzzled look
on his chubby face.

"Mother," he said, "mother!  Is the little un come back?"

"No, no!" she cried.  "That's not our'n.  It's--it's another one."

"Have the Lord sent us another?" said the boy, lifting the peak of
the little hood from the baby's eye, into which it was hanging, and
then fairly gathering the tiny creature, by a great effort, into his
arms, with the daring of a child accustomed to playing nurse to one
nearly as heavy as himself.  "I do be glad of that, mother.  The
Lord sent the other one in the night, too, mother; that night we
slept in the round-house.  Do 'ee mind?  Whishty, whishty, love!
Eh, mother, what eyes!  Whishty, whishty, then!  I'M seeing to thee,
I am."

There was something like a sob in the miller's own throat, but his
wife rose, and, running to the bed, fell on her knees, and with such
a burst of weeping as is the thaw of bitter grief gathered her
eldest child and the little outcast together to her bosom.

At this moment another head was poked up from the bedclothes, and
the second child began to say its say, hoping, perhaps, thereby to
get a share of attention and kisses as well as the other.

"I seed a lady and genle'm," it broke forth, "and was feared of un.
They was going out of doors.  The genle'm look back at us, but the
lady went right on.  I didn' see her face."

Matters were now in a domestic and straightforward condition, and
the windmiller no longer hesitated to come in.  But he was less
disposed to a hard and triumphant self-satisfaction than was common
with him when his will ended well.  A poor and unsuccessful career
had, indeed, something to do with the hardness of his nature, and in
this flush of prosperity he felt softened, and resolved inwardly to
"let the missus take her time," and come back to her ordinary
condition without interference.

"Shall un have a bit of supper, missus?" was his cheerful greeting
on coming in.  "But take your time," he added, seeing her busy with
the baby, "take your time."

By-and-by the nurse-boy took the child, and the woman bustled about
the supper.  She was still but half reconciled, and slapped the
plates on to the table with a very uncommon irritability.

The windmiller ate a hearty supper and washed it well down with
home-made ale, under the satisfactory feeling that he could pay for
more when he wanted it.  And as he began to plug his pipe with
tobacco, and his wife rocked the new-comer at her breast, he said
thoughtfully, -

"Do 'ee think, missus, that woman 'ud be the mother of un?"

"Mother!" cried his wife, scornfully.  "She've never been a mother,
maester; of this nor any other one.  To see her handle it was enough
for me.  The boy himself could see she never so much as looked back
at un.  To bring an infant out a night like this, too, and leave it
with strangers.  Mother, indeed, says he!"

"Take your time, missus, take your time!" murmured the miller in his
head.  He did not speak aloud, he only puffed his pipe.

"Do you suppose the genle'm be the father, missus?" he suggested, as
he rose to go back to his work.

"Maybe," said his wife, briefly; "I can't speak one way or another
to the feelings of men-folk."

This blow was hit straight out, but the windmiller forbore reply.
He was not altogether ill-pleased by it, for the woman's unwonted
peevishness broke down in new tears over the child, whom she bore
away to bed, pouring forth over it half inarticulate indignation
against its unnatural parents.

"She've a soft heart, have the missus," said the windmiller,
thoughtfully, as he went to the outer door.  "I'm in doubts if she
won't take to it more than her own yet.  But she shall have her own
time."

The storm had passed.  The wolds lay glistening and dreary under a
watery sky, but all was still.  The windmiller looked upwards
mechanically.  To be weatherwise was part of his trade.  But his
thoughts were not in the clouds to-night.  He brought the sample
bag, without thinking of it, to the surface of his pocket, and
dropped it slowly back again, murmuring, "Ten shilling a week."

And as he turned again to his night's work he added, with a nod of
complete conviction, "It'll more'n keep HE."



CHAPTER III.

THE WINDMILLER'S WORDS COME TRUE.--THE RED SHAWL.--IN THE CLOUDS.--
NURSING V. PIG-MINDING.--THE ROUND-HOUSE.--THE MILLER'S THUMB.

Strange to say, the windmiller's idea came true in time,--the
foster-child was the favorite.

He was the youngest of the family, for the mother had no more
children.  This goes for something.

Then, when she had once got over her repugnance to adopting him, he
did do much to heal the old grief, and to fill the empty place in
her heart as well as in the cradle.

He was a frail, fretful little creature, with a very red face just
fading into yellow, about as much golden down on his little pate as
would furnish a moth with plumage, and eyes like sloe-berries.  It
was fortunate rather than otherwise that he was so ailing for some
weeks that the good wife's anxieties came over again, and, in the
triumph of being this time successful, much of the bitterness of the
old loss passed away.

In a month's time he looked healthy, if not absolutely handsome.
The windmiller's wife, indeed, protested that he was lovely, and she
never wearied of marvelling at the unnatural conduct of those who
had found it in their hearts to intrust so sweet a child to the care
of strangers; though it must be confessed that nothing would have
pleased her less than the arrival of two doting and conscientious
parents to reclaim him.

Indeed, pity had much to do with the large measure of love that she
gave to the deserted child.  A meaner sentiment, too, was not quite
without its influence in the predominance which he gradually gained
over his foster brothers and sisters.  There was little enough to be
proud of in all that could be guessed as to his parentage (the
windmiller knew nothing), but there was scope for any amount of
fancy; and if the child displayed any better manners or talents than
the other children, Mrs. Lake would purse her lips, and say, with a
somewhat shabby pride, -

"Anybody may see 'tis gentry born."

"I've been thinking," said the windmiller, one day, "that if that
there woman weren't the mother, 'tis likely the mother's dead."

"'Tis likely, too," said his wife; and her kindness abounded the
more towards the motherless child.  Little Abel was nurse-boy to it,
as he had been to his sister.  Not much more than a baby himself, he
would wrap an old shawl round the baby who was quite a baby, stagger
carefully out at the door, and drop dexterously--baby uppermost--on
to the short, dry grass that lay for miles about the mill.

The shawl was a special shawl, though old.  It was red, and the
bright color seemed to take the child's fancy; he was never so good
as when playing upon the gay old rag.  His black eyes would sparkle,
and his tiny fingers clutch at it, when the mother put it about him
as he swayed in Abel's courageous grasp.  And then Abel would spread
it for him, like an eastern prayer carpet, under the shadow of the
old mill.

Little need had he of any medicine, when the fresh strong air that
blew about the downs was filling his little lungs for most of the
day.  Little did he want toys, as he lay on his red shawl gazing
upwards hour by hour, with Abel to point out every change in their
vast field of view.

It is a part of a windmiller's trade to study the heavens, and Abel
may have inherited a taste for looking skywards.  Then, on these
great open downs there is so much sky to be seen, you can hardly
help seeing it, and there is not much else to look at.  Had they
lived in a village street, or even a lane, Abel and his charge might
have taken to other amusements,--to games, to grubbing in hedges, or
amid the endless treasures of ditches.  But as it was, they lay hour
after hour and looked at the sky, as at an open picture-book with
ever-changing leaves.

"Look 'ee here!" the nurse-boy would cry.  "See to the crows, the
pretty black crows!  Eh, there be a lapwing!  Lap-py, lap-py, lap-
py, there he go!  Janny catch un!"

And the baby would stretch his arms responsive to Abel's expressive
signs, and cry aloud for the vanishing bird.

If no living creature crossed the ether, there were the clouds.
Sometimes a long triangular mass of small white fleecy clouds would
stretch across half the heavens, having its shortest side upon the
horizon, and its point at the zenith, where one white fleece seemed
to be leading a gradually widening flock across the sky.

"See then!" the nurse-boy would cry.  "See to the pretty sheep up
yonder!  Janny mind un!  So! so!"

And if some small gray scud, floating lower, ran past the far-away
cirrus, Abel would add with a quaint seriousness, "'Tis the sheep-
dog.  How he runs then!  Bow-wow!"

At sunset such a flock wore golden fleeces, and to them, and to the
crimson hues about them, the little Jan stretched his fingers, and
crowed, as if he would have clutched the western sky as he clutched
his own red shawl.

But Abel was better pleased when, in the dusk, the flock became dark
gray.

"They be Master Salter's pigs now," said he.  For pigs in Abel's
native place were both plentiful and black; and he had herded Master
Salter's flock (five and twenty black, and three spotted) for a
whole month before his services were required as nurse-boy to his
sister.

But for the coming of the new baby, he would probably have gone back
to the pigs.  And he preferred babies.  A baby demands attention as
well as a herd of pigs, but you can get it home.  It does not run
off in twenty-eight different directions, just when you think you
have safely turned the corner into the village.

Master Salter's swine suffered neglect at the hands of several
successors to the office Abel had held, and Master Salter--whilst
alluding to these in indignant terms as "young varments," "gallus-
birds," and so forth--was pleased to express his regret that the
gentle and trustworthy Abel had given up pig-minding for nursing.

The pigs' loss was the baby's gain.  No tenderer or more careful
nurse could the little Jan have had.  And he throve apace.

The windmiller took more notice of him than he had been wont to do
of his own children in their babyhood.  He had never been a playful
or indulgent father, but he now watched with considerable interest
the child who, all unconsciously, was bringing in so much "grist to
the mill."

When the weather was not fine enough for them to be out of doors,
Abel would play with his charge in the round-house, and the
windmiller never drove him out of the mill, as at one time he would
have done.  Now and then, too, he would pat the little Jan's head,
and bestow a word of praise on his careful guardian.

It may be well, by-the-by, to explain what a round-house is.  Some
of the brick or tower mills widen gradually and evenly to the base.
Others widen abruptly at the lowest story, which stands out all
round at the bottom of the mill, and has a roof running all round
too.  The projection is, in fact, an additional passage, encircling
the bottom story of the windmill.  It is the round-house.  If you
take a pill-box to represent the basement floor of a tower-mill, and
then put another pill-box two or three sizes larger over it, you
have got the circular passage between the two boxes, and have added
a round-house to the mill.  The round-house is commonly used as a
kind of store-room.

Abel Lake's windmill had no separate dwelling-house.  His
grandfather had built the windmill, and even his father had left it
to the son to add a dwelling-house, when he should perhaps have
extended his resources by a bit of farming or some other business,
such as windmillers often add to their trade proper.  But that
calamity of the broken sails had left Abel Lake no power for further
outlay for many years, and he had to be content to live in the mill.

The dwelling-room was the inner part of the basement floor.  Near
the door which led from this into the round-house was the ladder
leading to the next story, and close by that the opening through
which the sacks of grain were drawn up above.  The story above the
basement held the millstones and the "smutting" machine, for
cleaning dirty wheat.  The next above that held the dressing
machine, in which the bran was separated from the flour.  In the
next above that were the corn-bins.  To the next above that the
grain was drawn up from the basement in the first instance.  The top
story of all held the machinery connected with the turning of the
sails.  Ladders led from story to story, and each room had two
windows on opposite sides of the mill.

Use is second nature, and all the sounds which haunt a windmill were
soon as familiar and as pleasant to the little Jan as if he had been
born a windmiller's son.  Through many a windy night he slept as
soundly as a sailor in a breeze which might disturb the nerves of a
land-lubber.  And when the north wind blew keen and steadily, and
the chains jangled as the sacks of grist went upwards, and the
millstones ground their monotonous music above his head, these
sounds were only as a lullaby to his slumbers, and disturbed him no
more than they troubled his foster-mother, to whom the revolving
stones ground out a homely and welcome measure:  "Dai-ly bread, dai-
ly bread, dai-ly bread."

For another sign of his being a true child of the mill, his nurse
Abel anxiously watched.

Though Abel preferred nursing to pig-minding, he had a higher
ambition yet, which was to begin his career as a windmiller.  It was
not likely that he could be of use to his father for a year or two,
and the fact that he was of very great use to his mother naturally
tended to delay his promotion to the mill.

Mrs. Lake was never allowed to say no to her husband, and she seemed
to be unable, and was certainly unwilling, to say it to her
children.  Happily, her eldest child was of so sweet and docile a
temper that spoiling did him little harm; but even with him her
inability to say no got the mother into difficulties.  She was
obliged to invent excuses to "fub off," when she could neither
consent nor refuse.

So, when Abel used to cling about her, crying, "Mother dear, when'll
I be put t'help father in the mill?  Do 'ee ask un to let me come in
now!  I be able to sweep 's well as Gearge.  I sweeps the room for
thee,"--she had not the heart or the courage to say, "I want thee,
and thy father doesn't," but she would take the boy's hand tenderly
in hers, and making believe to examine his thumbs with a purpose,
would reply, "Wait a bit, love.  Thee's a sprack boy, and a good un,
but thee's not rightly got the miller's thumb."

And thus it came about that Abel was for ever sifting bits of flour
through his finger and thumb, to obtain the required flatness and
delicacy which marks the latter in a miller born; and playing
lovingly with little Jan on the floor of the round-house, he would
pass some through the baby's fingers also, crying, -

"Sift un, Janny! sift un!  Thee's a miller's lad, and thee must have
a miller's thumb."



CHAPTER IV.

BLACK AS SLANS.--VAIR AND VOOLISH.--THE MILLER AND HIS MAN.

It was a great and important time to Abel when Jan learned to walk;
but, as he was neither precocious nor behindhand in this respect,
his biographer may be pardoned for not dwelling on it at any length.

He had a charming demure little face, chiefly differing from the
faces of the other children of the district by an overwhelming
superiority in the matter of forehead.

Mrs. Lake had had great hopes that he would differ in another
respect also.

Most of the children of the neighborhood were fair.  Not fair as so
many North-country children are, with locks of differing, but
equally brilliant, shades of gold, auburn, red, and bronze; but
white-headed, and often white-faced, with white-lashed inexpressive
eyes, as if they had been bleaching through several generations.

Now, when the dark bright eyes of the little Jan first came to be of
tender interest with Mrs. Lake, she fully hoped, and constantly
prophesied, that he would be "as black as a rook;" a style of
complexion to which she gave a distinct preference, though the
miller was fair by nature as well as white by trade.  Jan's eyes
seemed conclusive.

"Black as slans they be," said his foster-mother.  And slans meant
sloe-berries where Mrs. Lake was born.

An old local saying had something perhaps to do with her views:  -

     "Lang and lazy,
        Black and proud;
      Vair and voolish,
        Little and loud."

"Fair and foolish" youngsters certainly abounded in the neighborhood
to an extent which justified a wish for a change.

As to pride, meek Mrs. Lake was far from regarding it as a failing
in those who had any thing to be proud of, such as black hair and a
possible connection with the gentry.  And fate having denied to her
any chance of being proud or aggressive on her own account, she
derived a curious sort of second-hand satisfaction from seeing these
qualities in those who belonged to her.  It did to some extent
console her for the miller's roughness to herself, to hear him
rating George.  And she got a sort of reflected dignity out of being
able to say, "My maester's a man as will have his way."

But her hopes were not realized.  That yellow into which the
beefsteak stage of Jan's infant complexion had faded was not
destined to deepen into gipsy hues.  It gave place to the tints of
the China rose, and all the wind and sunshine on the downs could not
tan, though they sometimes burnt, his cheeks.  The hair on his
little head became more abundant, but it kept its golden hue.  His
eyes remained dark,--a curious mixture; for as to hair and
complexion he was irredeemably fair.

The mill had at least one "vair and voolish" inmate, by common
account, though by his own (given in confidence to intimate friends)
he was "not zuch a vool as he looked."

This was George Sannel, the miller's man.

Master Lake had had a second hand in to help on that stormy night
when Jan made his first appearance at the mill; but as a rule he
only kept one man, whom he hired for a year at a time, at the mop or
hiring fair held yearly in the next town.

George, or Gearge as he was commonly called, had been more than two
years in the windmill, and was looked upon in all respects as "one
of the family."  He slept on a truckle-bed in the round-house,
which, though of average size, would not permit him to stretch his
legs too recklessly without exposing his feet to the cold.

For "Gearge" was six feet one and three-quarters in his stockings.

He had a face in some respects like a big baby's.  He had a turn-up
nose, large smooth cheeks, a particularly innocent expression, a
forehead hardly worth naming, small dull eyes, with a tendency to
inflammation of the lids which may possibly have hindered the lashes
from growing, and a mouth which was generally open, if he were
neither eating nor sucking a "bennet."  When this countenance was
bathed in flour, it might be an open question whether it were
improved or no.  It certainly looked both "vairer" and more
"voolish!"

There is some evidence to show that he was "lazy," as well as
"lang," and yet he and Master Lake contrived to pull on together.

Either because his character was as childlike as his face, and
because--if stupid and slothful by nature--he was also of so
submissive, susceptible, and willing a temper that he disarmed the
justest wrath; or because he was, as he said, not such a fool as he
looked, and had in his own lubberly way taken the measure of the
masterful windmiller to a nicety, George's most flagrant acts of
neglect had never yet secured his dismissal.

Indeed, it really is difficult to realize that any one who is lavish
of willingness by word can wilfully and culpably fail in deed.

"I be a uncommon vool, maester, sartinly," blubbered George on one
occasion when the miller was on the point of turning him off, as a
preliminary step on the road to the "gallus," which Master Lake
expressed his belief that he was "sartin sure to come to."  And, as
he spoke, George made dismal daubs on his befloured face with his
sleeve, as he rubbed his eyes with his arm from elbow to wrist.

"Sech a governor as you be, too!" he continued.  "Poor mother! she
allus said I should come to no good, such a gawney as I be!  No more
I shouldn't but for you, Master Lake, a-keeping of me on.  Give un
another chance, sir, do 'ee!  I be mortal stoopid, sir, but I'd work
my fingers to the bwoan for the likes of you, Master Lake!"

George stayed on, and though the very next time the windmiller was
absent his "voolish" assistant did not get so much as a toll-dish of
corn ground to flour, he was so full of penitence and promises that
he weathered that tempest and many a succeeding one.

On that very eventful night of the storm, and of Jan's arrival,
George's neglect had risked a recurrence of the sail catastrophe.
At least if the second man's report was to be trusted.

This man had complained to the windmiller that, during his absence
with the strangers, George, instead of doubling his vigilance now
that the men were left short-handed, had taken himself off under
pretext of attending to the direction of the wind and the position
of the sails outside, a most important matter, to which he had not,
after all, paid the slightest heed; and what he did with himself,
whilst leaving the mill to its fate and the fury of the storm, his
indignant fellow-servant professed himself "blessed if he knew."

But few people are as grateful as they should be when informed of
misconduct in their own servants.  It is a reflection on one's
judgment.

And unpardonable as George's conduct was, if the tale were true, the
words in which he couched his self-defence were so much more
grateful to the ears of the windmiller than the somewhat free and
independent style in which the other man expressed his opinion of
George's conduct and qualities, that the master took his servant's
part, and snubbed the informer for his pains.

In justice to George, too, it should be said that he stoutly and
repeatedly denied the whole story, with many oaths and imprecations
of horrible calamities upon himself if he were lying in the smallest
particular.  And this with reiteration so steady, and a countenance
so guileless and unmoved, as to contrast favorably with the face of
the other man, whose voice trembled and whose forehead flushed,
either with overwhelming indignation or with a guilty consciousness
that he was bearing false witness.

Master Lake employed him no more, and George stayed on.

But, for that matter, Master Lake's disposition was not one which
permitted him to profit by the best qualities of those connected
with him.  He was a bit of a tyrant, and more than one man, six
times as clever, and ten times as hard-working as George, had gone
when George would have stayed, from crossing words with the
windmiller.  The safety of the priceless sails, if all were true,
had been risked by the man he kept, and secured by the man he sent
away, but Master Lake was quite satisfied with his own decision.

"I bean't so fond myself of men as is so mortal sprack and fussy in
a strange place," the miller observed to Mrs. Lake in reference to
this matter.

Mrs. Lake had picked up several of her husband's bits of proverbial
wisdom, which she often flattered him by retailing to his face.

"Too hot to hold, mostly," was her reply, in knowing tones.

"Ay, ay, missus, so a be," said the windmiller.  And after a while
he added, "Gearge is slow, sartinly, mortal slow; but Gearge is
sure."



CHAPTER V.

THE POCKET-BOOK AND THE FAMILY BIBLE.--FIVE POUNDS' REWARD.

Of the strange gentleman who brought Jan to the windmill, the Lakes
heard no more, but the money was paid regularly through a lawyer in
London.

From this lawyer, indeed, Master Lake had heard immediately after
the arrival of his foster-son.

The man of business wrote to say that the gentleman who had visited
the mill on a certain night had, at that date, lost a pocket-book,
which he thought might have been picked up at the mill.  It
contained papers only valuable to the owner, and also a five-pound
note, which was liberally offered to the windmiller if he could find
the book, and forward it at once.

Master Lake began to have a kind of reckless, gambling sort of
feeling about luck.  Here would be an easily earned five pounds, if
he could but have the luck to find the missing property!  That ten
shillings a week had come pretty easily to him.  When all is said,
there ARE people into whose mouths the larks fall ready cooked!

The windmiller looked inside the mill and outside the mill, and
wandered a long way along the chalky road with his eyes downwards,
but he was no nearer to the five-pound note for his pains.  Then he
went to his wife, but she had seen nothing of the pocket-book; on
which her husband somewhat unreasonably observed that, "A might a
been zartin THEE couldn't help un!"

He next betook himself to George, who was slowly, and it is to be
hoped surely, sweeping out the round-house.

"Gearge, my boy," said the windmiller, in not too anxious tones,
"have 'ee seen a pocket-book lying about anywheres?"

George leaned upon his broom with one hand, and with the other
scratched his white head.

"What be a pocket-book, then, Master Lake?" said he, grinning, as if
at his own ignorance.

"Thee's eerd of a pocket-book before now, thee vool, sure-ly!" said
the impatient windmiller.

"I'se eerd of a pocket of hops, Master Lake," said George, after an
irritating pause, during which he still smiled, and scratched his
poll as if to stimulate recollection.

"Book--book--book! pocket-BOOK!" shouted the miller.  "If thee can't
read, thee knows what a book is, thee gawney!"

"What a vool I be, to be sure!" said George, his simple countenance
lighted up with a broader smile than before.  "I knows a book,
sartinly, Master Lake, I knows a book.  There's one," George
continued, speaking even slower than before,--"there's one inzide,
sir,--a big un.  On the shelf it be.  A Vamly Bible they calls un.
And I'm sartin sure it be there," he concluded, "for a hasn't been
moved since the last time you christened, Master Lake."

The miller turned away, biting his lip hard, to repress a useless
outburst of rage, and George, still smiling sweetly, spun the broom
dexterously between his hands, as a man spins the water out of a
stable mop.  Just before Master Lake had got beyond earshot, George
lowered the broom, and began to scratch his head once more.  "I be a
proper vool, sartinly," said he; and when the miller heard this, he
turned back.  "Mother allus said I'd no more sense in my yead than a
dumbledore," George candidly confessed.  And by a dumbledore he
meant a humble-bee.  "It do take me such a time to mind any thing,
sir."

"Well, never mind, Gearge," said the miller; "if thee's slow, thee's
sure.  What do 'ee remember about the book, now, Gearge?  A don't
mind giving thee five shilling, if thee finds un, Gearge."

"A had un down at the burying, I 'member quite well now, sir.  To
put the little un's name in 'twas.  I thowt a hadn't been down zince
christening, I be so stoopid sartinly."

"What are you talking about, ye vool?" roared the miller.

"The book, sir, sartinly," said George, his honest face beaming with
good-humor.  "The Vamly Bible, Master Lake."

And as the windmiller went off muttering something which the Family
Bible would by no means have sanctioned, George returned chuckling
to a leisurely use of his broom on the round-house floor.

Master Lake did not find the pocket-book, and after a day or two it
was advertised in a local paper, and a reward of five pounds offered
for it.

George Sannel was seated one evening in the "Heart of Oak" inn,
sipping some excellent home-brewed ale, which had been warmed up for
his consumption in a curious funnel-shaped pipkin, when his long
lop-ears caught a remark made by the inn-keeper, who was reading out
bits from the local paper to a small audience, unable to read it for
themselves.

"Five pound reward!" he read.  "Lor massy!  There be a sum to be
easily earned by a sharp-eyed chap with good luck on 's side."

"And how then, Master Chuter?" said George, pausing, with the
steaming mug half-way to his lips.

"Haw, haw!" roared the inn-keeper:  "you be a sharp-eyed chap, too!
Do 'ee think 'twould suit thee, Gearge?  Thee's a sprack chap,
sartinly, Gearge!"

"Haw, haw, haw!" roared the other members of the company, as they
slowly realized Master Chuter's irony at the expense of the
"voolish" Gearge.

George took their rough banter in excellent part.  He sipped his
beer, and grinned like a cat at his own expense.  But after the
guffaws had subsided, he said, "Thee's not told un about that five
pound yet, Master Chuter."

The curiosity of the company was by this time aroused, and Master
Chuter explained:  "'Tis a gentleman by the name of Ford as is
advertising for a pocket-book, a seems to have lost on the downs,
near to Master Lake's windmill.  'Tis thy way, too, Gearge, after
all.  Thee must get up yarly, Gearge.  'Tis the yarly bird catches
the worm.  And tell Master Lake from me, 'll have all the young
varments in the place a driving their pigs up to his mill, to look
for the pocket-book, while they makes believe to be minding their
pigs."

"Tis likely, too," said George.  And the two or three very aged
laborers in smocks, and one other lubberly boy, who composed the
rest of the circle, added, severally and collectively, "'Tis likely,
too."

But, as George beat his way home over the downs in the dusk, he said
aloud, under cover of the roaring wind, and in all the security of
the open country, -

"Vive pound! vive pound!  And a offered me vive shilling for un.
Master Lake, you be dog-ged cute; but Gearge bean't quite such a
vool as a looks."

After a short time the advertisement was withdrawn.



CHAPTER VI.

GEORGE GOES COURTING.--GEORGE AS AN ENEMY.--GEORGE AS A FRIEND.--
ABEL PLAYS SCHOOL-MASTER.--THE LOVE-LETTER.--MOERDYK.--THE MILLER-
MOTH.--AN ANCIENT DITTY.

One day George Sannel asked and obtained leave for a holiday.

On the morning in question, he dressed himself in the cleanest of
smocks, greased his boots, stuck a bloody warrior, or dark-colored
wallflower, in his bosom, put a neatly folded, clean cotton
handkerchief into his pocket,--which, even if he did not use it, was
a piece of striking dandyism,--and scrubbed his honest face to such
a point of cleanliness that Mrs. Lake was almost constrained to
remark that she thought he must be going courting.

George did not blush,--he never blushed,--but he looked "voolish"
enough to warrant the suspicion that his errand was a tender one,
and he had no other reason to give for his spruce appearance

It was, perhaps, in his confusion that he managed to convey a
mistaken notion of the place to which he was going to Mrs. Lake.
She was under the impression that he went to the neighboring town,
whereas he went to one in an exactly opposite direction, and some
miles farther away.

He went to the bank, too, which seems an unlikely place for tender
tryst; but George's proceedings were apt to be less direct than the
simplicity of his looks and speech would have led a stranger to
suppose.  When he reached home, the windmiller and his family were
going to bed, for the night was still, and the mill idle.  George
betook himself at once to where his truckle-bed stood in the round-
house, and proceeded to light his mill-candlestick, which was stuck
into the wall.

From the chink into which it was stuck he then counted seven bricks
downwards, and the seventh yielded to a slight effort and came out.
It was the door, so to speak, of a hole in the wall of the mill,
from which he drew a morocco-bound pocket-book.  After an uneasy
glance over his shoulder, to make sure that the long dark shadow
which stretched from his own heels, and shifted with the draught in
which the candle flared, was not the windmiller creeping up behind
him, he took a letter out of the book and held it to the light as if
to read it.  But he never turned the page, and at last replaced it
with a sigh.  Then he put the pocket-book back into the hole, and
pushed in after it his handkerchief, which was tied round something
which chinked as he pressed it in.  Then he replaced the brick, and
went to bed.  He said nothing about the bank in the morning nor
about the hole in the mill-wall; and he parried Mrs. Lake's
questions with gawky grins and well-assumed bashfulness.

Abel overheard his mother's jokes on the subject of "Gearge's young
'ooman," and they recurred to him when he and George formed a
curious alliance, which demands explanation.

It was not solely because the windmiller looked favorably upon the
little Jan that he and Abel were now allowed to wander in the
business parts of the windmill, when they could not be out of doors,
to an extent never before permitted to the children.  Part of the
change was due to a change in the miller's man.

However childlike in some respects himself, George was not fond of
children, and he had hitherto seemed to have a particular spite
against Abel.  He, quite as often as the miller, would drive the boy
from the round-house, and thwart his fancy for climbing the ladders
to see the processes of the different floors.

Abel would have been happy for hours together watching the great
stones grind, or the corn poured by golden showers into the hopper
on its way to the stones below.  Many a time had he crept up and
hidden himself behind a sack; but George seemed to have an impish
ingenuity in discovering his hiding-places, and would drive him out
as a dog worries a cat, crying, "Come out, thee little varment!
Master Lake he don't allow thee hereabouts."

The cleverness of the miller's man in discovering poor Abel's
retreats probably arose from the fact that he had so rooted a
dislike for the routine work of his daily duties that he would
rather employ himself about the mill in any way than by attending to
the mill-business, and that his idleness and stupidity over work
were only equalled by his industry and shrewdness in mischief.

Poor Abel had a dread of the great, gawky, mischievous-looking man,
which probably prevented his complaining to his mother of many a sly
pinch and buffet which he endured from him.  And George took some
pains to keep up this wholesome awe of himself, by vague and
terrifying speeches, and by a trick of what he called "dropping on"
poor Abel in the dusk, with hideous grimaces and uncouth sounds.

He once came thus upon Abel in an upper floor, and the boy fled from
him so hastily that he caught his foot in the ladder and fell
headlong.  Though it must have been quite uncertain for some moments
whether Abel had not broken his neck, the miller's man displayed no
anxiety.  He only clapped his hands upon his knees, in a sort of
uncouth ecstasy of spite, saying, "Down a comes vlump, like a twoad
from roost.  Haw, haw, haw!"

Happily, Abel fell with little more damage to himself than the mill-
cats experienced in many such a tumble, as they fled before the
tormenting George.

But, after all this, it was with no small surprise that Abel found
himself the object of attentions from the miller's man, which bore
the look of friendliness.

At first, when George made civil speeches, and invited Abel to "see
the stwones a-grinding," he only felt an additional terror, being
convinced that mischief was meant in reality.  But, when days and
weeks went by, and he wandered unmolested from floor to floor, with
many a kindly word from George, and not a single cuff or nip, the
sweet-tempered Abel began to feel gratitude, and almost an
affection, for his quondam tormentor.

George, for his part, had hitherto done some violence to his own
feelings by his constant refusal to allow Abel to help him to sweep
the mill or couple the sacks for lifting.  He would have been only
too glad to put some of his own work on the shoulders of another,
had it not been for the vexatious thought that he would be giving
pleasure by so doing where he only wanted to annoy.  And in his very
unamiable disposition malice was a stronger quality even than
idleness.

But now, when for some reason best known to himself, he wished to
win Abel's regard, it was a slight recompense to him for restraining
his love of tormenting that he got a good deal of work out of Abel
at odd moments when the miller was away.  So well did he manage
this, that a marked improvement in the tidiness of the round-house
drew some praise from his master.

"Thee'll be a sprack man yet, Gearge," said the windmiller,
encouragingly.  "Thee takes the broom into the corners now."

"So I do," said George, unblushingly, "so I do.  But lor, Master
Lake, what a man you be to notice un!"  George's kinder demeanor
towards Abel began shortly after the coming of the little Jan, and
George himself accounted for it in the following manner:  -

"You do be kind to me now, Gearge," said Abel, gratefully, as he
stood one day, with the baby in his arms, watching the miller's man
emptying a sack of grain into the hopper.

"I likes to see thee with that babby, Abel," said George, pausing in
his work.  "Thee's a good boy, Abel, and careful.  I likes to do any
thing for thee, Abel."

"I wish I could do any thing for thee, Gearge," said Abel; "but I be
too small to help the likes of you, Gearge."

"If you're small, you're sprack," said the miller's man.  "Thee's a
good scholar, too, Abel.  I'll be bound thee can read, now?  And a
poor gawney like I doesn't know's letters."

"I can read a bit, Gearge," said Abel, with pride; "but I've been at
home a goodish while; but mother says she'll send I to school again
in spring, if the little un gets on well and walks."

"I wish I could read," said George, mournfully; "but time's past for
me to go to school, Abel; and who'd teach a great lummakin vool like
I his letters?"

"I would, Gearge, I would!" cried Abel, his eyes sparkling with
earnestness.  "I can teach thee thy letters, and by the time thee's
learned all I know, maybe I'll have been to school again, and
learned some more."

This was the foundation of a curious kind of friendship between Abel
and the miller's man.

On the same shelf with the "Vamly Bible," before alluded to, was a
real old horn-book, which had belonged to the windmiller's
grandmother.  It was simply a sheet on which the letters of the
alphabet, and some few words of one syllable, were printed, and it
was protected in its frame by a transparent front of thin horn,
through which the letters could be read, just as one sees the prints
through the ground-glass of "drawing slates."

From this horn-book Abel labored patiently in teaching George his
letters.  It was no light task.  George had all the cunning and
shrewdness with which he credited himself; but a denser head for any
intellectual effort could hardly have been found for the seeking.
Still they struggled on, and as George went about the mill he might
have been heard muttering, -

"A B C G.  No!  Cuss me for a vool!  A B C _D_.  Why didn't they
whop my letters into I when a was a boy?  A B C"--and so persevering
with an industry which he commonly kept for works of mischief.

One evening he brought home a newspaper from the Heart of Oak, and
when Mrs. Lake had taken the baby, he persuaded Abel to come into
the round-house and give him a lesson.  Abel could read so much of
it that George was quite overwhelmed by his learning.

"Thee be's mortal larned, Abel, sartinly.  But I'll never read like
thee," he added, despairingly.  "Drattle th' old witch; why didn't
she give I some schooling?"  He spoke with spiteful emphasis, and
Abel, too well used to his rough language to notice the uncivil
reference to his mother, said with some compassion, -

"Were you never sent to school then, Gearge?"

"They should ha' kept me there," said George, self-defensively.  "I
played moocher," he continued,--by which he meant truant,--"and then
they whopped I, and a went home to mother, and she kept un at home,
the old vool!"

"Well, Gearge, thee must work hard, and I'll teach thee, Gearge,
I'll teach thee!" said little Abel, proudly.  "And by-and-by,
Gearge, we'll get a slate, and I'll teach thee to write too, Gearge,
that I will!"

George's small eyes gave a slight squint, as they were apt to do
when he was thinking profoundly.

"Abel," said he, "can thee read writing, my boy?"

"I think I could, Gearge," said Abel, "if 'twas pretty plain."

"Abel, my boy," said George, after a pause, with a broad sweet smile
upon his "voolish" face, "go to the door and see if the wind be
rising at all; us mustn't forget th' old mill, Abel, with us
larning.  Sartinly not, Abel, mun."

Proud of the implied partnership in the care of the mill, Abel
hastened to the outer door.  As he passed the inner one, leading
into the dwelling-room, he could hear his mother crooning a strange,
drony, old local ditty, as she put the little Jan to sleep.  As Abel
went out, she was singing the first verse:  -

     "The swallow twitters on the barn,
      The rook is cawing on the tree,
      And in the wood the ringdove coos,
      But my false love hath fled from me."

Abel opened the door, and looked out.  One of those small white
moths known as "millers" went past him.  The night was still,--so
utterly still that no sound of any sort whatever broke upon the ear.
In dead silence and loneliness stood the mill.  Even the miller-moth
had gone; and a cat ran in by Abel's legs, as if the loneliness
without were too much for her.  The sky was gray.

Abel went back to the round-house, where George was struggling to
fix the candlestick securely in the wall.

"Cuss the thing!" he exclaimed, whilst the skin of his face took a
mottled hue that was the nearest approach he ever made to a blush.
"The tallow've been a dropping, Abel, my boy.  I think 'twas the
wind when you opened the door, maybe.  And I've been a trying to fix
un more firmly.  That's all, Abel; that's all."

"There ain't no signs of wind," said Abel.  "It's main quiet and
unked too outside, Gearge.  And I do think it be like rain.  There
was a miller-moth, Gearge; do that mean any thing?"

"I can't say," said George.  "I bean't weatherwise myself, Abel.
But if there be no wind, there be no work, Abel; so us may go back
to our larning.  Look here, my boy," he added, as Abel reseated
himself on the grain-sack which did duty as chair of instruction,
and drawing, as he spoke, a letter forth to the light; "come to the
candle, Abel, and see if so be thee can read this, but don't tell
any one I showed it thee, Abel."

"Not me, Gearge," said Abel, warmly; and he added,--"Be it from thy
young 'ooman, Gearge?"

No rustic swain ever simpered more consciously or looked more
foolish than George under this accusation, as he said, "Be quiet,
Abel, do 'ee."

"She be a good scholar, too!" said Abel, looking admiringly at the
closely written sheet.

George could hardly disguise the sudden look of fury in his face,
but he hastily covered up the letter with his hands in such a manner
as only to leave the first word on the page visible.  There was a
deeply cunning reason for this clever manoeuvre.  George held
himself to be pretty "cute," and he reckoned that, by only showing
one word at a time, he could effectually prevent any attempt on
Abel's part to read the letter himself without giving its contents
to George.  Like many other cunning people, George overreached
himself.  The first word was beyond Abel's powers, though he might
possibly have satisfied George's curiosity on one essential point,
by deciphering a name or two farther on.  But the clever George
concluded that he had boasted beyond his ability, so he put the
letter away.  Abel tried hard at the one word which George
exhibited, and gazed silently at it for some time with a puzzled
face.  "Spell it, mun, spell it!" cried the miller's man,
impatiently.  It was a process which he had seen to succeed, when a
long word had puzzled his teacher in the newspaper, before now.

"M O E R, mower; D Y K, dik," said Abel.  But he looked none the
wiser for the effort.

"Mower dik!  What be that?" said George, peering at the word.
"Do'ee think it be Mower dik, Abel?"

"I be sure," said Abel.

"Or do 'ee think 'tis 'My dear Dick'?" suggested George, anxiously,
and with a sort of triumph in his tone, as if that were quite what
he expected.

"No, no.  'Tis an O, Gearge, that second letter.  Besides, twould be
My dear Gearge to thee, thou knows."

Again the look with which the miller's man favored Abel was far from
pleasant.  But he controlled his voice to its ordinary drawl (always
a little slower and more simple sounding, when he specially meant
mischief).

"So 'twould, Abel.  So 'twould.  What a vool I be, to be sure!  But
give it to I now.  We'll look at it another time, Abel."

"I be very sorry, Gearge," said Abel, who had a consciousness that
the miller's man was ill-pleased in spite of his civility.  "It be
so long since I was at school, and it be such a queer word.  Do 'ee
think she can have spelt un wrong, Gearge?"

"'Tis likely she have," said George, regaining his composure.

"Abel!  Abel!  Abel!" cried the mother from the dwelling-room.
"Come to bed, child!"

"Good-night, Gearge.  I'm main sorry to be so stupid, Gearge," said
Abel, and off he ran.

Mrs. Lake was walking up and down, rocking the little Jan in her
arms, who was wailing fretfully.

"I be puzzled to know what ails un," said Mrs. Lake, in answer to
Abel's questions.  "He be quite in a way tonight.  But get thee to
bed, Abel."

And though Abel begged hard to be allowed to try his powers of
soothing with the little Jan, Mrs. Lake insisted upon keeping the
baby herself; and Abel undressed, and crept into the press-bed.  He
fell asleep in spite of a somewhat disturbed mind.  That mysterious
word and George's evident displeasure worried him, and he was
troubled also by the unusual fretfulness of the little Jan, and the
sound of sorrow in his baby wail.  His last waking thoughts were a
strange mixture, passing into stranger dreams.

The word Moerdyk danced before his eyes, but brought no meaning with
it.  Jan's cries troubled him, and with both there blended the
droning of the ancient plaintive ditty, which the foster-mother sang
over and over again as she rocked the child in her arms.  That wail
of the baby's must have in some strange manner recalled the first
night of his arrival, when Abel found him wailing on the bed.  For
the fierce eyes of the strange gentleman haunted Abel's dreams, but
in the face of the miller's man.

The poor boy dreamed horribly of being "dropped on" by George, with
fierce black eyes added to the terrors of his uncouth grimaces.  He
seemed to himself to fly blindly and vainly through the mill from
his tormentor, till George was driven from his thoughts by his
coming suddenly upon the little Jan, wailing as he really did wail,
round whose head a miller-moth was sailing slowly, and singing in a
human voice:  -

     "The swallow twitters on the barn,
      The rook is cawing on the tree,
      And in the wood the ringdove coos,
      But my false love hath fled from me.

      Like tiny pipe of wheaten straw,
      The wren his little note doth swell,
      And every living thing that flies,
      Of his true love doth fondly tell.

      But I alone am left to pine,
      And sit beneath the withy tree;
      For truth and honesty be gone,
      And my false love hath fled from me."



CHAPTER VII.

ABEL GOES TO SCHOOL AGAIN.--DAME DATCHETT.--A COLUMN OF SPELLING.--
ABEL PLAYS MOOCHER.--THE MILLER'S MAN CANNOT MAKE UP HIS MIND.

Abel went to school again in the spring, and, though George would
have been better pleased had he forgotten the whole affair, he
remembered the word in George's young woman's love-letter which had
puzzled him; and never was a spelling-lesson set him among the M's
that he did not hope to come across it and to be able to demand the
meaning of Moerdyk from his Dame.

Without the excuse of its coming in the column of spelling set by
herself, Abel dared not ask her to solve his puzzle; for never did
teacher more warmly resent questions which she was unable to answer
than Dame Datchett.

Abel could not fully make up his mind whether it should be looked up
among two-syllabled or three-syllabled words.  He decided for the
former, and one day brought his spelling-book to George in the
round-house.

"I've been a looking for that yere word, Gearge," said he.  "There's
lots of Mo's, but it bean't among 'em.  Here they be.  Words of two
syllables; M, Ma, Me, Mi; here they be, Mo."  And Abel began to
rattle off the familiar column at a good rate, George looking
earnestly over his shoulder, and following the boy's finger as it
moved rapidly down the page.  "Mocking, Modern, Mohawk, Molar,
Molly, Moment, Money, Moping, Moral, Mortal, Moses, Motive,
Movement."

"Stop a bit, mun," cried George; "what do all they words mean?  They
bothers me."

"I knows some of 'em," said Abel, "and I asked Dame Datchett about
the others, but she do be so cross; and I thinks some of 'em
bothered she too.  There's mocking.  I knows that.  'What's a
modern, Dame?' says I.  'A muddle-headed fellow the likes of you,'
says she.  'What's a mohawk, Dame?' says I.  'It's what you'll come
to before long, ye young hang-gallus,' says she.  I was feared on
her, Gearge, I can tell 'ee; but I tried my luck again.  'What's a
molar, Dame?' says I.  ''Tis a wus word than t'other,' says she;
'and, if 'ee axes me any more voolish questions, I'll break thee
yead for 'ee.'  Do 'ee think 'tis a very bad word, Gearge?" added
Abel, with a rather indefensible curiosity.

"I never heard un," said George.  And this was perhaps decisive
against the Dame's statement.  "And I don't believe un neither.  I
think it bothered she.  I believe 'tis a genteel word for a man as
catches oonts.  They call oonts MOLES in some parts, so p'r'aps they
calls a man as catches moles a molar, as they calls a man as drives
a mill a miller."

"'Tis likely too, Gearge," said Abel.  "Well!  Molly we knows.  And
moment, and moping, and moral."

"What's moral?" inquired George.

"'Tis what they put at the end of Vables, Gearge.  There's Vables at
the end of the spelling-book, and I've read un all.  There's the
Wolf and the Lamb, and" -

"I knows now," said George.  "'Tis like the last verse of that song
about the Harnet and the Bittle.  Go on, Abel."

"Mortal.  That's swearing.  Moses.  That's in the Bible, Gearge.
Motive.  I thought I'd try un just once more.  'What's a motive,
Dame?' says I.  'I've got un here,' says she, quite quiet-like.  But
I seed her feeling under 's chair, and I know'd 'twas for the strap,
and I ran straight off, spelling-book and all, Gearge."

"So thee've been playing moocher, eh?" said George, with an
unpleasant twinkle in his eyes.  "What'll Master Lake say to that?"

"Don't 'ee tell un, Gearge!" Abel implored; "and, O Gearge! let I
tell mother about the word.  Maybe she've heard tell of it.  Let I
show her the letter, Gearge.  She'll read it for 'ee.  She's a
scholard, is mother."

There was no mistaking now the wrath in George's face.  The fury
that is fed by fear blazes pretty strongly at all times.

"Look 'ee, Abel, my boy," said he, pinching Abel's shoulder till he
turned red and white with pain.  "If thee ever speaks of that letter
and that word to any mortal soul, I'll tell Master Lake thee plays
moocher, and I'll half kill thee myself.  Thee shall rue the day
ever thee was born!" he added, almost beside himself with rage and
terror.  And as, after a few propitiating words, Abel fled from the
mill, George ground his hands together and muttered, "Motive!  I
wish the old witch had motived every bone in thee body, or let me do
't!"

Master George Sannel was indeed a little irritable at this stage of
his career.  Like the miller, he had had one stroke of good luck,
but capricious fortune would not follow up the blow.

He had made five pounds pretty easily.  But how to turn some other
property of which he had become possessed to profit for himself was,
after months of waiting, a puzzle still.

He was well aware that his own want of education was the great
hindrance to his discovering for himself the exact worth of what he
had got.  And to his suspicious nature the idea of letting any one
else into his secret, even to gain help, was quite intolerable.

Abel seemed to be no nearer even to the one word that George had
showed him, after weeks of "schooling," and George himself
progressed so slowly in learning to read that he was at times
tempted to give up the effort in despair.

Of his late outburst against Abel he afterwards repented, as
impolitic, and was soon good friends again with his very placable
teacher.

Much of the time when he should have been at work did George spend
in "puzzling" over his position.  Sometimes, as from an upper window
of the mill he saw the little Jan in Abel's arms, he would mutter, -

"If a body were to kidnap un, would they advertise he, I wonders?"
and after some consideration would shake his white head doubtfully,
saying, "No, they wants to get rid of un, or they wouldn't have
brought un here."

Happily for poor little Jan, the unscrupulous rustic rejected the
next idea which came to him as too doubtful of success.

"I wonder if they'd come down something handsome to them as could
tell 'em the young varmint was off their hands for good and all.
'Twould save un ten shilling a week.  Ten shilling a week!  I heard
un with my own ears.  I'd a kep' un for five, if they'd asked me.  I
wonders now.  Little uns like that does get stole by gipsies
sometimes.  Varmer Smith's son were, and never heard on again.  They
falls into a mill-race too sometimes.  They be so venturesome.  But
I doubt 'twouldn't do.  Them as it belongs to might be glad enough
to get rid of un, and save their credit and their money too by
turning upon I after all."

The miller's man puzzled himself in vain.  He could think of no mode
of action at once safe and certain of success.  He did not even know
whether what he possessed had any value, or how or where to make use
of it.  But a sort of dim hope of seeing his way yet kept him about
the mill, and he persevered in the effort to learn to read, and kept
his big ears open for any thing that might drop from the miller or
his wife to throw light on the history of Jan, with whom his hopes
were bound up.

Meanwhile, with a dogged patience, he bided his time.



CHAPTER VIII.

VISITORS AT THE MILL.--A WINDMILLER OF THE THIRD GENERATION.--CURE
FOR WHOOPING-COUGH.--MISS AMABEL ADELINE AMMABY.--DOCTORS DISAGREE.

One of the earliest of Jan's remembrances--of those remembrances, I
mean, which remained with him when childhood was past--was of little
Miss Amabel, from the Grange, being held in the hopper of the
windmill for whooping cough.

Jan was between three and four years old at this time, the idol of
his foster-mother, and a great favorite with his adopted brothers
and sisters.  A quaint little fellow he was, with a broad,
intellectual-looking face, serious to old-fashionedness, very fair,
and with eyes "like slans."

He was standing one morning at Mrs. Lake's apron-string, his arms
clasped lovingly, but somewhat too tightly, round the waist of a
sandy kitten, who submitted with wonderful good-humor to the well-
meant strangulation, his black eyes intently fixed upon the
dumplings which his foster-mother was dexterously rolling together,
when a strange footstep was heard shuffling uncertainly about on the
floor of the round-house just outside the dwelling-room door.  Mrs.
Lake did not disturb herself.  Country folk were constantly coming
with their bags of grist, and both George and the miller were at
hand, for a nice breeze was blowing, and the mill ground merrily.

After a few seconds, however, came a modest knock on the room-door,
and Mrs. Lake, wiping her hands, proceeded to admit the knocker.
She was a smartly dressed woman, who bore such a mass of laces and
finery, with a white woollen shawl spread over it, apparently with
the purpose of smothering any living thing there might chance to be
beneath, as, in Mrs. Lake's experienced eyes, could be nothing less
than a baby of the most genteel order.

The manners of the nurse were most genteel also, and might have
quite overpowered Mrs. Lake, but that the windmiller's wife had in
her youth been in good service herself, and, though an early
marriage had prevented her from rising beyond the post of nursemaid,
she was fairly familiar with the etiquette of the nursery and of the
servants' hall.

"Good morning, ma'am," said the nurse, who no sooner ceased to walk
than she began a kind of diagonal movement without progression, in
which one heel clacked, and all her petticoats swung, and the baby
who, head downwards, was snorting with gaping mouth under the
woollen coverlet, was supposed to be soothed.  "Good morning, ma'am.
You'll excuse my intruding" -

"Not at all, mum," said Mrs. Lake.  By which she did not mean to
reject the excuse, but to disclaim the intrusion.

When the nurse was not speaking, she kept time to her own rocking by
a peculiar click of her tongue against the roof of her mouth; and
indeed it sometimes mingled, almost confusingly, with her
conversation.  "You're very obliging, ma'am, I'm sure," said she,
and, persuaded by Mrs. Lake, she took a seat.  "You'll excuse me for
asking a singular question, ma'am, but WAS YOUR HUSBAND'S FATHER AND
GRANDFATHER BOTH MILLERS?"

"They was, mum," said Mrs. Lake.  "My husband's father's father
built this mill where we now stands.  It cost him a deal of money,
and he died with a debt upon it.  My husband's father paid un off;
and he meant to have built a house, mum, but he never did, worse
luck for us.  He allus says, says he,--that's my husband's father,
mum,--'I'll leave that to Abel,'--that's my maester, mum.  But nine
year ago come Michaelmas" -

Mrs. Lake's story was here interrupted by a frightful outburst of
coughing from the unfortunate baby, who on the removal of the
woollen shawl presented an appearance which would have been comical
but for the sympathy its condition demanded.

A very red and utterly shapeless little face lay, like a crushed
beet-root, in a mass of dainty laces almost voluminous enough to
have dressed out a bride.  As a sort of crowning satire, the face in
particular was surrounded by a broad frill, spotted with bunches of
pink satin ribbon, and farther encased in a white satin hood of
elaborate workmanship and fringes.

The contrast between the natural red of the baby's complexion and
its snowy finery was ludicrously suggestive of an over-dressed
nigger, to begin with; but when, in the paroxysms of its cough, the
tiny creature's face passed by shades of plum-color to a bluish
black, the result was appalling to behold.

Mrs. Lake's experienced ears were not slow to discover that the
child had got whooping-cough, which the nurse confessed was the
case.  She also apologized for bringing in the baby among Mrs.
Lake's children, saying that she had "thought of nothing but the
poor little chirrub herself."

"Don't name it, mum," replied the windmiller's wife.  "I always say
if children be to have things, they'll have 'em; and if not, why
they won't."  A theory which seems to sum up the views of the
majority of people in Mrs. Lake's class of life upon the spread of
disease.

"I'm sure I don't know what's coming to my poor head," the nurse
continued:  "I've not so much as told you who I am, ma'am.  I'm
nurse at the Grange, ma'am, with Mr. Ammaby and Lady Louisa.
They've been in town, and her ladyship's had the very best advice,
and now we've come to the country for three months, but the dear
child don't seem a bit the better.  And we've been trying every
thing, I'm sure.  For any thing I heard of I've tried, as well as
what the doctor ordered, and rubbing it with some stuff Lady
Louisa's mamma insisted upon, too,--even to a frog put into the dear
child's mouth, and drawed back by its legs, that's supposed to be a
certain cure, but only frightened it into a fit I thought it never
would have come out of, as well as fetching her ladyship all the way
from her boudoir to know what was the matter--which I no more dared
tell her than fly."

"Dear, dear!" said the miller's wife; "have you tried goose-grease,
mum?  'Tis an excellent thing."

"Goose-grease, ma'am, and an excellent ointment from the bone-
setter's at the toll-bar, which the butler paid for out of his own
pocket, knowing it to have done a world of good to his sister that
had a bad leg, besides being a certain cure for coughs, and cancer,
and consumption as well.  And then the doctor's IMPRECATION on its
little chest, night and morning, besides; but nothing don't seem to
do no good," said the poor nurse.  "And so, ma'am,--her ladyship
being gone to the town,--thinks I, I'll take the dear child to the
windmill.  For they do say,--where I came from, ma'am,--that if a
miller, that's the son of a miller, and the grandson of a miller,
holds a child that's got the whooping-cough in the hopper of the
mill whilst the mill's going, it cures them, however bad they be."

The reason of the nurse's visit being now made known, Mrs. Lake
called her husband, and explained to him what he was asked to do for
"her ladyship's baby."  The miller scratched his head.

"I've heard my father say that his brother that drove a mill in
Cheshire had had it to do," said he, "but I never did it myself,
ma'am, nor ever see un done.  And a hopper be an ackerd place,
ma'am.  We've ground many a cat in this mill, from getting in the
hopper at nights for warmth.  However," he added, "I suppose I can
hold the little lady pretty tight."  And finally, though with some
unwillingness, the miller consented to try the charm; being chiefly
influenced by the wish not to disoblige the gentlefolk at the
Grange.

The little Jan had watched the proceedings of the visitors with
great attention.  During the poor baby's fit of coughing, he was so
absorbed that the sandy kitten slipped through his arms and made
off, with her tail as stiff as a sentry's musket; and now that the
miller took the baby into his arms, Jan became excited, and asked,
"What daddy do with un?"

"The old-fashioned little piece!" exclaimed the nurse, admiringly.
And Mrs. Lake added, "Let un see the little lady, maester."

The miller held out the baby, and the nurse, removing a dainty
handkerchief edged with Valenciennes lace from its face, introduced
it as "Miss Amabel Adeline Ammaby;" and Mrs. Lake murmured, "What a
lovely little thing!"  By which, for truth's sake, it is to be hoped
she meant the lace-edged handkerchief.

In the exchange of civilities between the two women, the respective
children in their charge were admonished to kiss each other,--a feat
which was accomplished by Jan's kissing the baby very tenderly, and
with all his usual gravity.

As this partly awoke the baby from a doze, its red face began to
crease, and pucker, and twist into various contortions, at which Jan
gazed with a sort of solemn curiosity in his black eyes.

"Stroke the little lady's cheeks, love," said Mrs. Lake,
irrepressibly proud of the winning ways and quaint grace which
certainly did distinguish her foster-child.

Jan leaned forward once more, and passed his little hand softly down
the baby's face twice or thrice, as he was wont to stroke the sandy
kitten, as it slept with him, saying, "Poor itta pussy!"

"It's not a puss-cat, bless his little heart!" said the matter-of-
fact nurse.  "It's little Miss Amabel Adeline Ammaby."

"Say it, love!" said Mrs. Lake, adding, to the nurse, "he can say
any thing, mum."

"Miss AM--ABEL AD--E--LINE AM--MA--BY," prompted the nurse.

"Amabel!" said the little Jan, softly.  But, after this feat, he
took a fit of childish reticence, and would say no more; whilst,
deeply resentful of the liberties Jan had taken, Miss Amabel Adeline
Ammaby twisted her features till she looked like a gutta-percha
gargoyle, and squalled as only a fretful baby can squall.

She was calmed at last, however, and the windmiller took her once
more into his arms, and Mrs. Lake carrying Jan, they all climbed up
the narrow ladder to the next floor.

Heavily ground the huge stones with a hundred and twenty revolutions
a minute, making the chamber shake as they went round.

They made the nurse giddy.  The simplest machinery has a bewildering
effect upon an unaccustomed person.  So has going up a ladder; which
makes you feel much less safe in the place to which it leads you
than if you had got there by a proper flight of stairs.  So--very
often--has finding yourself face to face with the accomplishment of
what you have been striving for, if you happen to be weak-minded.

Under the combined influences of all these causes, the nurse
listened nervously to Master Lake, as he did the honors of the mill.

"Those be the mill-stones, ma'am.  Pretty fastish they grinds, and
they goes faster when the wind's gusty.  Many a good cat they've
ground as flat as a pancake from the poor gawney beasts getting into
the hopper."

"Oh, sir!" cried the nurse, now thoroughly alarmed, "give me the
young lady back again.  Deary, deary me!  I'd no notion it was so
dangerous.  Oh, don't, sir! don't!"

"Tut, tut!  I'll hold un safe, ma'am," said the windmiller, who had
all a man's dislike for shirking at the last moment what had once
been decided upon; and, as the nurse afterwards expressed it, before
she had time to scream, he had tucked Miss Amabel Adeline Ammaby's
finery well round her, and had dipped her into the hopper and out
again.

In that moment of suspense both the women had been silent, and the
little Jan had gazed steadily at the operation.  As it safely ended,
they both broke simultaneously into words.

"You might have knocked me down with a feather, mum!" gasped Mrs.
Lake.  "I couldn't look, mum.  I couldn't have looked to save my
life.  I turned my back."

"I'd back 'ee allus to do the silliest thing as could be done,
missus," said the miller, who had a pleasant husbandly way of
commenting upon his wife's conversation to her disparagement, when
she talked before him.

"As for me, ma'am," the nurse said, "I couldn't take my eyes off the
dear child's hood.  But move,--no thank you, ma'am,--I couldn't have
moved hand or foot for a five-pound note, paid upon the spot."

The baby got well.  Whether the mill charm worked the cure, or
whether the fine fresh breezes of that healthy district made a
change for the better in the child's state, could not be proved.

Nor were these the only possible causes of the recovery.

The kind-hearted butler blessed the day when he laid out three and
eightpence in a box of the bone-setter's ointment, to such good
purpose.

Lady Louisa's mamma triumphantly hoped that it would be a lesson to
her dear daughter never again to set a London doctor's advice
(however expensive) above a mother's (she meant a grandmother's)
experience.

The cook said, "Goose-grease and kitchen physic for her!"

And of course the doctor very properly, as well as modestly,
observed that "he had confidently anticipated permanent beneficial
results from a persevering use of the embrocation."

And only to the nurse and the windmiller's family was it known that
Miss Amabel Adeline Ammaby had been dipped in the mill-hopper.



CHAPTER IX.

GENTRY BORN.--LEARNING LOST.--JAN'S BEDFELLOW.--AMABEL.

After the nurse and baby had left the mill, Mrs. Lake showered extra
caresses upon the little Jan.  It had given her a strange pleasure
to see him in contact with the Squire's child.  She knew enough of
the manners and customs, the looks and the intelligence of the
children of educated parents, to be aware that there were "makings"
in those who were born heirs to developed intellects, and the grace
that comes of discipline, very different from the "makings" to be
found in the "voolish" descendants of ill-nurtured and uneducated
generations.  She had no philosophical--hardly any reasonable or
commendable--thoughts about it.  But she felt that Jan's countenance
and his "ways" justified her first belief that he was "gentry born."

She was proud of his pretty manners.  Indeed, curiously enough, she
had recalled her old memories of nursery etiquette under a first-
rate upper nurse in "her young days," to apply them to the little
Jan's training.

Why she had not done this with her own children is a question that
cannot perhaps be solved till we know why so many soldiers, used
for, it may be, a quarter of a century to personal cleanliness as
scrupulous as a gentleman's, and to enforced neatness of clothes,
rooms, and general habits, take back to dirt and slovenliness with
greediness when they leave the service; and why many a nurse, whose
voice and manners were beyond reproach in her mistress's nursery,
brings up her own children in after life on the village system of
bawling, banging, threatening, cuddling, stuffing, smacking, and
coarse language, just as if she had never experienced the better
discipline attainable by gentle firmness and regular habits.

Mrs. Lake had a small satisfaction in Jan's brief and limited
intercourse with so genteel a baby, and after it was all over she
amused herself with making him repeat the baby's very genteel (and
as she justly said "uncommon") name.

When Abel came back from school, he resumed his charge, and Mrs.
Lake went about other work.  She was busy, and the nurse-boy put Jan
to bed himself.  The sandy kitten waited till Jan was fairly
established, so as to receive her comfortably, and then she dropped
from the roof of the press-bed, and he cuddled her into his arms,
where she purred like a kettle just beginning to sing.

Outside, the wind was rising, and, passing more or less through the
outer door, it roared in the round-house; but they were well
sheltered in the dwelling-room, and could listen complacently to the
gusts that whirled the sails, and made the heavy stones fly round
till they shook the roof.  Just above the press-bed a candle was
stuck in the wall, and the dim light falling through the gloom upon
the children made a scene worthy of the pencil of Rembrandt, that
great son of a windmiller.

When Mrs. Lake found time to come to the corner where the old press-
bed stood, the kitten was asleep, and Jan very nearly so; and by
them sat Abel, watching every breath that his foster-brother drew.
And, as he watched, his trustworthy eyes and most sweet smile
lighting up a face to which his forefathers had bequeathed little
beauty or intellect, he might have been the guardian angel of the
nameless Jan, scarcely veiled under the likeness of a child.

His mother smiled tenderly back upon him.  He was very dear to her,
and not the less so for his tenderness to Jan.

Then she stooped to kiss her foster-child, who opened his black eyes
very wide, and caught the sleeping kitten round the head, in the
fear that it might be taken from him.

"Tell Abel the name of pretty young lady you see today, love," said
Mrs. Lake.

But Jan was well aware of his power over the miller's wife, and was
apt to indulge in caprice.  So he only shook his head, and cuddled
the kitten more tightly than before.

"Tell un, Janny dear.  Tell un, there's a lovey!" said Mrs. Lake.
"Who did daddy put in the hopper?"  But still Jan gazed at nothing
in particular with a sly twinkle in his black eyes, and continued to
squeeze poor Sandy to a degree that can have been little less
agonizing than the millstone torture; and obdurate he would probably
have remained, but that Abel, bending over him, said, "Do 'ee tell
poor Abel, Jan."

The child fixed his bright eyes steadily on Abel's well-loved face
for a few seconds, and then said quite clearly, in soft, evenly
accented syllables, -

"Amabel."

And the sandy kitten, having escaped with its life, crept back into
Jan's bosom and purred itself to rest.



CHAPTER X.

ABEL AT HOME.--JAN OBJECTS TO THE MILLER'S MAN.--THE ALPHABET.--THE
CHEAP JACK.--"PITCHERS."

Poor Abel was not fated to get much regular schooling.  He
particularly liked learning, but the interval was all too brief
between the time when his mother was able to spare him from
housework and the time when his father began to employ him in the
mill.

George got more lazy and stupid, instead of less so, and though in
some strange manner he kept his place, yet when Master Lake had once
begun to employ his son, he found that he would get along but ill
without him.

To Jan, Abel's being about the windmill gave the utmost
satisfaction.  He played with his younger foster-brothers and
sisters contentedly enough, but his love for Abel, and for being
with Abel, was quite another thing.

Mrs. Lake, too, had no confidence in any one but Abel as a nurse for
her darling; the consequence of which was, that the little Jan was
constantly trotting at his foster-brother's heels through the round-
house, attempting valiant escalades on the ladders, and covering
himself from head to foot with flour in the effort to cultivate a
miller's thumb.

One day Mrs. Lake, having sent the other children off to school, was
bent upon having a thorough cleaning-out of the dwelling-room,
during which process Jan was likely to be in her way; so she caught
him up in her arms and went to seek Abel in the round-house.

She had the less scruple in availing herself of his services, that
there was no wind, and business was not brisk in the windmill.

"Maester!" she cried, "can Abel mind Jan a bit?  I be going to clean
the house."

"Ay, ay," said the windmiller, "Abel can mind un.  I be going to the
village myself, but there's Gearge to start, if so be the wind
rises.  And then if he want Abel, thee must take the little un
again."

"Sartinly I will," said his wife; and Abel willingly received his
charge and carried him off to play among the sacks.

George joined them once, but Jan had a rooted and unconquerable
dislike to the miller's man, and never replied to his advances with
any thing more friendly than anger or tears.  This day was no
exception to others in this respect; and after a few fruitless
attempts to make himself acceptable, in the course of which he trod
on the sandy kitten's tail, who ran up Jan's back and spat at her
enemy from that vantage-ground, George went off muttering in terms
by no means complimentary to the little Jan.  Abel did his best to
excuse the capricious child to George, besides chiding him for his
rudeness--with very little effect.  Jan dried his black eyes as the
miller's man made off, but he looked no more ashamed of himself than
a good dog looks who has growled or refused the paw of friendship to
some one for excellent reasons of his own.

After George had gone, they played about happily enough, Jan riding
on Abel's back, and the sandy kitten on Jan's, in and out among the
corn-sacks, full canter as far as the old carved meal-chest, and
back to the door again.

Poor Abel, with his double burden, got tired at last, and they sat
down and sifted flour for the education of their thumbs.  Jan was
pinching and flattening his with a very solemn face, in the hope of
attaining to a miller's thumb by a shorter process than the common
one, when Abel suddenly said, -

"I tell thee what, then, Jan:  'tis time thee learned thy letters.
And I'll teach thee.  Come hither."

Jan jumped up, thereby pitching the kitten headlong from his
shoulders, and ran to Abel, who was squatting by some spilled flour
near a sack, and was smoothing it upon the floor with his hands.
Then very slowly and carefully he traced the letter A in the flour,
keenly watched by Jan.

"That's A," said he.  "Say it, Jan.  A."

"A," replied Jan, obediently.  But he had no sooner said it, than,
adding hastily, "Let Jan do it," he traced a second A, slightly
larger than Abel's, in three firm and perfectly proportioned
strokes.

His moving finger was too much for the kitten's feelings, and she
sprang into the flour and pawed both the A's out of existence.

Jan slapped her vigorously, and having smoothed the surface once
more, he drew A after A with the greatest rapidity, scrambling along
sideways like a crab, and using both hands indifferently, till the
row stretched as far as the flour would permit.

Abel's pride in his pupil was great, and he was fain to run off to
call his mother to see the performances of their prodigy, but Jan
was too impatient to spare him.

"Let Jan do more!" he cried.

Abel traced a B in the flour.  "That's B, Jan," said he.

"Jan do it," replied Jan, confidently.

"But say it," said his teacher, restraining him.  "Say B, Jan."

"B," said Jan, impatiently; and adding, "Jan do it," he began a row
of B's.  He hesitated slightly before making the second curve, and
looked at his model, after which he went down the line as before,
and quite as successfully.  And the kitten went down also, pawing
out each letter as it was made, under the impression that the whole
affair was a game of play with herself.

"There bean't a letter that bothers him," cried Abel, triumphantly,
to the no less triumphant foster-mother.

Jan had, indeed, gone through the whole alphabet, with the utmost
ease and self-confidence; but his remembrance of the names of the
letters he drew so readily proved to be far less perfect than his
representations of them on the floor of the round-house.

Abel found his pupil's progress hindered by the very talent that he
had displayed.  He was so anxious to draw the letters that he would
not learn them, and Abel was at last obliged to make one thing a
condition of the other.

"Say it then, Jan," he would cry, "and then thee shall make 'em."

Mrs. Lake commissioned Abel to buy a small slate and pencil for Jan
at the village shop, and these were now the child's favorite toys.
He would sit quiet for any length of time with them.  Even the sandy
kitten was neglected, or got a rap on its nose with the slate-
pencil, when to toy with the moving point had been too great a
temptation to be resisted.  For a while Jan's taste for wielding the
pencil was solely devoted to furthering his learning to read.  He
drew letters only till the day that the Cheap Jack called.

The Cheap Jack was a travelling pedler, who did a good deal of
business in that neighborhood.  He was not a pedler pure, for he had
a little shop in the next town.  Nature had not favored him.  He was
a hunchback.  He was, or pretended to be, deaf.  He had a very ugly
face, made uglier by dirt, above which he wore a mangy hair cap.  He
sold rough pottery, cheap crockery and glass, mock jewelry, low
song-books, framed pictures, mirrors, and quack medicines.  He
bought old bottles, bones, and rags.  And what else he bought or
sold, or dealt with, was dimly guessed at by a few, but fully known
to none.

Where he was born, what was his true name or age, whether on any
given occasion he was speaking less than lies, and what was the
ultimate object of his words and deeds,--at these things no one even
guessed.  That his conscience was ever clean, that his dirty face
once masked no vile or petty plots for evil in the brain behind,
that at some past period he was a child,--these things it would have
tasked the strongest faith to realize.

He was not so unpopular with children as the miller's man.

The instinct of children is like the instinct of dogs, very true and
delicate as a rule.  But dogs, from Cerberus downwards, are liable
to be biassed by sops.  And four paper-covered sails, that twirl
upon the end of a stick as the wind blows, would warp the better
judgment of most little boys, especially (for a bargain is more
precious than a gift) when the thing is to be bought for a few old
bones.

Jan was a little afraid of the Cheap Jack, but he liked his
whirligigs.  They went when the mill was going, and sometimes when
the mill wouldn't go, if you ran hard to make a breeze.

But it so happened that the first day on which the Cheap Jack came
round after Jan had begun to learn his letters, he brought forth
some wares which moved Jan's feelings more than the whirligigs did.

"Buy a nice picter, marm?" said the Cheap Jack to Mrs. Lake, who,
with the best intentions not to purchase, felt that there could be
no harm in seeing what the man had got.

"You shall have 'Joseph and his Bretheren' cheap," roared the
hunchback, becoming more pressing as the windmiller's wife seemed
slow to be fascinated, and shaking "Joseph and his Brethren," framed
in satin-wood, in her face, as he advanced upon her with an almost
threatening air.  "Don't want 'em?  Take 'Antony and Cleopatterer.'
It's a sweet picter.  Too dear?  Do you know what sech picters costs
to paint?  Look at Cleopatterer's dress and the jewels she has on.
I don't make a farthing on 'em.  I gets daily bread out of the other
things, and only keeps the picters to oblige one or two ladies of
taste that likes to give their rooms a genteel appearance."

The long disuse of such powers of judgment as she had, and long
habit of always giving way, had helped to convert Mrs. Lake's
naturally weak will and unselfish disposition into a sort of mental
pulp, plastic to any pressure from without.  To men she invariably
yielded; and, poor specimen of a man as the Cheap Jack was, she had
no fibre of personal judgment or decision in the strength of which
to oppose his assertions, and every instant she became more and more
convinced that wares she neither wanted nor approved of were
necessary to her, and good bargains, because the man who sold them
said so.

The Cheap Jack was a knave, but he was no fool.  In a crowded
market-place, or at a street door, no oilier tongue wagged than his.
But he knew exactly the moment when a doubtful bargain might be
clinched by a bullying tone and a fierce look on his dirty face, at
cottage doors, on heaths or downs, when the good wife was alone with
her children, and the nearest neighbor was half a mile away.

No length of experience taught Mrs. Lake wisdom in reference to the
Cheap Jack.

Each time that his cart appeared in sight she resolved to have
nothing to do with him, warned by the latest cracked jug, or the
sugar-basin which, after three-quarters of an hour wasted in
chaffering, she had beaten down to three-halfpence dearer than what
she afterwards found to be the shop price in the town.  But proof to
the untrained mind is "as water spilled upon the ground."  And when
the Cheap Jack declared that she was quite free to look without
buying, and that he did not want her to buy, Mrs. Lake allowed him
to pull down his goods as before, and listened to his statements as
if she had never proved them to be lies, and was thrown into
confusion and fluster when he began to bully, and bought in haste to
be rid of him, and repented at leisure--to no purpose as far as the
future was concerned.

"Look here!" yelled the hunchback, as he waddled with horrible
swiftness after the miller's wife, as she withdrew into the mill;
"which do you mean to have?  _I_ gets nothing on 'em, whichever you
takes, so please yourself.  Take 'Joseph and his Bretheren.'  The
frame's worth twice the money.  Take the other, too, and I'll take
sixpence off the pair, and be out of pocket to please you."

"Nothing to-day, thank you!" said Mrs. Lake, as loudly as she could.

"Got any other sort, you say?" said the Cheap Jack.  "I've got all
sorts, but some parties is so difficult to please.

"Wait a bit, wait a bit," he continued, as Mrs. Lake again tried to
make him (willing to) hear that she wanted none of his wares; and,
vanishing with the uncanny quickness common to him, he waddled
swiftly back again to his cart, and returned, before Mrs. Lake could
secure herself from intrusion, laden with a fresh supply of
pictures, the weight of which it seemed marvellous that he could
support.

"Now you've got your choice, marm," he said.  "It's no trouble to me
to oblige a good customer.  There's picters for you!"

"PITCHERS!" said Jan, admiringly, as he crept up to them.

"So they are, my little man.  Now then, help your mammy to choose.
Most of these is things you can't get now, for love nor money.  Here
you are,--'Love and Beauty.'  That's a sweet thing.  'St Joseph,'
'The Robber's Bride,' 'Child and Lamb,' 'Melan-choly.'  Here's an
old" -

"Pitcher!" exclaimed Jan once more, gazing at an old etching in a
dirty frame, which the Cheap Jack was holding in his hand.
"Pitcher, pitcher! let Jan look!" he cried.

It was of a water-mill, old, thatched, and with an unprotected
wheel, like the one in the valley below.  Some gnarled willows
stretched across the water, whose trunks seemed hardly less time-
worn and rotten than the wheel below.  This foreground subject was
in shadow, and strongly drawn, but beyond it, in the sunlight, lay a
bit of delicate distance, on the rising ground of which stood one of
those small wooden windmills known as Post-mills.  An old woman and
a child were just coming into the shade, and passing beneath a
wayside shrine.  What in the picture took Jan's fancy it is
impossible to say, but he gazed at it with exclamations of delight.

The Cheap Jack saw that it was certain to be bought, and he raised
the price accordingly.

Mrs. Lake felt the same conviction, and began to try at least to get
a good bargain.

"'Tis a terr'ble old frame," said she.  "There be no gold left
on't."  And no more there was.

"What do you say?" screamed the Cheap Jack, with his hand to his
ear, and both a great deal too close to Mrs. Lake's face to be
pleasant.

"'Tis such an old frame," she shouted, "and the gold be all gone."

"Old!" cried the hunchback, scowling; "who says I sell old things?
Every picter in that lot's brand new and dirt cheap."

"The gold be rubbed off," screamed Mrs. Lake in his ear.

"Brighten it up, then," said the Cheap Jack.  "Gold ain't paint;
gold ain't paper; rub it up!" and, suiting the action to the word,
he rubbed the dirty old frame vigorously with the dirty sleeve of
his smock.

"It don't seem to brighten it, nohow," said Mrs. Lake, looking
nervously round; but neither the miller nor George was to be seen.

"Real gold allus looks like this in damp weather," said the Cheap
Jack.  "Hang it up in a warm room, dust it lightly every morning
with a dry handkerchief, an' it'll come out that shining you'll see
your face in it.  And when summer comes, cover it up in yaller gauze
to keep off the flies."

Mrs. Lake looked wistfully at the place the Cheap Jack had rubbed,
but she had no redress, and saw no way out of her hobble but to buy
the picture.

When the bargain was completed, the Cheap Jack fell back into his
oiliest manner; it being part of his system not only to bully at the
critical moment, but to be very civil afterwards, so as to leave an
impression so pleasant on the minds of his lady customers that they
could hardly do other than thank him for his promise to call again
shortly with "bargains as good as ever."

The Cheap Jack was a man of many voices.  The softness of his
parting words to Mrs. Lake, "I'd go three mile out of my road,
ma'am, to call on a lady like you," had hardly died away, when he
woke the echoes of the plains by addressing his horse in a very
different tone.

The Wiltshire carters and horses have a language between them which
falls darkly upon the ear of the unlearned therein; but the uncouth
yell which the Cheap Jack addressed to his beast was not of that
dialect.  The sound he made on this occasion was not, Ga oot!  Coom
hedder! or, There right! but the horse understood it.

It is probable that it never heard the Cheap Jack's softer
intonations, for its protuberant bones gave a quiver beneath the
scarred skin as he yelled.  Then its drooping ears pricked faintly,
the quavering forelegs were braced, one desperate jog of the
tottering load of oddities, and it set slowly and silently forward.

The Cheap Jack did not follow his wares; he scrambled softly round
the mill, like a deformed cat, looking about him on all sides.  Then
he made use of another sound,--a sharp, suggestive sound, whistled
between two of his fingers.

Then he looked round again.

No one appeared.  The wheels of the distant cart scraped slowly
along the road, but this was the only sound the Cheap Jack heard.

He whistled softly again.

And as the cart took the sharp turn of the road, and was lost to
sight, the miller's man appeared, and the Cheap Jack greeted him in
the softest tone he had yet employed.  "Ah, there you are, my dear!"


Meanwhile, Mrs. Lake sat within, and looked ruefully at the damaged
frame, and wished that the master, or at least the man, had happened
to be at home.

It is to be feared that our self-reproach for having done wrong is
not always so certain, or so keen, as our self-reproach for having
allowed ourselves to suffer wrong--in a bad bargain.

Whether this particular picture was a bad bargain it is not easy to
decide.

It was scandalously dear for its condition, and for what it had cost
the hunchback, but it was cheap for the pleasure it gave to the
little Jan.



CHAPTER XI.

SCARECROWS AND MEN.--JAN REFUSES TO "MAKE GEARGE."--UNCANNY.--"JAN'S
OFF."-THE MOON AND THE CLOUDS.

The picture gave Jan great pleasure, but it proved a stumbling-block
on the road to learning.

To "make letters" on his slate had been the utmost of his ambition,
and as he made them he learned them.  But after the Cheap Jack's
visit his constant cry was, "Jan make pitchers."  And when Abel
tried to confine his attention to the alphabet, he would, after a
most perfunctory repetition of a few letters that he knew, and hap-
hazard blunders over fresh ones, fling his arms round Abel's neck
and say coaxingly, "Abel dear, make Janny PITCHERS on his slate."

Abel's pictures, at the best, were of that style of wall decoration
dear to street boys.

"Make a pitcher of a man," Jan would cry.  And Abel did so, bit by
bit, to Jan's dictation.  Thus "Make's head.  Make un round.  Make
two eyes.  Make a nose.  Make a mouth.  Make's arms.  Make's
fingers," etc.  And, with some "free-handling," Abel would strike
the five fingers off, one by one, in five screeching strokes of the
slate-pencil.  But his art was conventional, and when Jan said,
"Make un a miller's thumb," he was puzzled, and could only bend the
shortest of the five strokes slightly backwards to represent the
trade-mark of his forefathers.

And when a little later Jan said one day, "'Tis a galley crow, that
is.  NOW make a pitcher of a MAN, Abel dear!" Abel found that the
scarecrow figure was the limit of his artist powers, and
thenceforward it was Jan who "made pitchers."

He drew from dawn to dusk upon the little slate which he wore tied
by a bit of string to the belt of his pinafore.  He drew his foster-
mother, and Abel, and the kitten, and the clock, and the flower-pots
in the window, and the windmill itself, and every thing he saw or
imagined.  And he drew till his slate was full on both sides, and
then in very primitive fashion he spat and rubbed it all out and
began again.  And whenever Jan's face was washed, the two faces of
his slate were washed too; and with this companion he was perfectly
happy and constantly employed.

Now it was Abel who gave the subjects for the pictures, and Jan who
made them, and it was good Abel also who washed the slate, and
rubbed the well-worn stumps of pencil to new points upon the round-
house floor.

They often went together to a mound at some little distance, where,
seated side by side, they "made a mill" upon the slate, Jan drawing,
and Abel dictating the details to be recorded.

"Put in the window, Jan," he would say; "and another, and another,
and another, and another.  Now put the sails.  Now put the stage.
Now put daddy by the door."

On one point Jan was obstinate.  He steadily refused to "make
Gearge" upon his slate in any capacity whatever.  Perhaps it was in
this habit of constantly gazing at all things about him, in order to
commit them to his slate, which gave a strange, dreamy expression to
Jan's dark eyes.  Perhaps it was sky-gazing, or the windmiller's
trick of watching the clouds, or perhaps it was something else, from
which Jan derived an erectness of carriage not common among the
children about him, and a quaint way of carrying his little chin in
the air as if he were listening to voices from a higher level than
that of the round-house floor.

If he had lived farther north, he could hardly have escaped the
suspicion of uncanniness.  He was strangely like a changeling among
the miller's children.

To gratify that old whim of his about the red shawl, his doting
foster-mother made him little crimson frocks; and as he wandered
over the downs in his red dress and a white pinafore, his yellow
hair flying in the breeze, his chin up, his black eyes wide open,
with slate in one hand, his pencil in the other, and the sandy
kitten clinging to his shoulder (for Jan never lowered his chin to
help her to balance herself), he looked more like some elf than a
child of man.

He had queer, independent ways of his own, too; freaks,--not naughty
enough for severe punishment, but sufficiently out of the routine
and unexpected to cause Mrs. Lake some trouble.

He was no sooner firmly established on his own legs, with the power
of walking, or rather toddling, independent of help, than he took to
making expeditions on the downs by himself.  He would watch his
opportunity, and when his foster-mother's back was turned, and the
door of the round-house opened by some grist-bringer, he would slip
out and toddle off with a swiftness decidedly dangerous to a balance
so lately acquired.

Sometimes Mrs. Lake would catch sight of him, and if her hands were
in the wash-tub, or otherwise engaged, she would cry to the nurse-
boy, "Abel, he be off!  Jan's off."  A comic result of which was
that Jan generally announced his own departure in the same words,
though not always loud enough to bring detection upon himself.

When his chance came and the door was open, he would pause for half
a moment on the threshold to say, in a tone of intense self-
satisfaction, "He be off.  Abel!  Janny's off!" and forthwith toddle
out as hard as he could go.  As he grew older, he dropped this form;
but the elfish habit of appearing and disappearing at his own whim
was not cured.

It was a puzzle as well as a care to Mrs. Lake.  All her own
children had given trouble in their own way,--a way much the same
with all of them.  They squalled for what they wanted, and, like
other mothers of her class, she served them whilst her patience
lasted, and slapped them when it came to an end.  They clung about
her when she was cooking, in company with the cats, and she put tit-
bits into their dirty paws, and threw scraps to the clean paws of
the cats, till the nuisance became overwhelming, and she kicked the
cats and slapped the children, who squalled for both.  They dirted
their clothes, they squabbled, they tore the gathers out of her
dresses, and wailed and wept, and were beaten with a hazel-stick by
their father, and pacified with treacle-stick by the mother; and so
tumbled up, one after the other, through childish customs and
misdemeanors, almost as uniform as the steps of the mill-ladders.

But the customs and misdemeanors of the foster-child were very
different.

His appetite to be constantly eating, drinking, or sucking--if it
were but a bennet or grass-stalk--was less voracious than that of
the other children.  Mrs. Lake gave him Benjamin's share of treacle-
stick, but he has been known to give some of it away, and to
exchange peppermint-drops for a slate-pencil rather softer than his
own.  He would have had Benjamin's share of "bits" from the
cupboard, but that the other children begged so much oftener, and
Mrs. Lake was not capable of refusing any thing to a steady tease.
He could walk the whole length of a turnip-field without taking a
munch, unless he were hungry, though even dear old Abel invariably
exercised his jaws upon a "turmut."  And he made himself ill with
hedge-fruits and ground-roots seldomer than any other member of the
family.

So far, Jan gave less trouble than the rest.  But then he had a
spirit of enterprise which never misled them.  From the effects of
this, Abel saved his life more than once.  On one occasion he pulled
him out of the wash-tub, into which he had plunged head-foremost, in
a futile endeavor to blow soap-bubbles through a fragment of clay-
pipe, which he had picked up on the road, and which made his lips
sore for a week, besides nearly causing his death by drowning.

From diving into the deepest recesses of the windmill it became
hopeless to try to hinder him, and when Abel was fairly taken into
the business Mrs. Lake relied upon his care for his foster-brother.
And Jan was wary and nimble, for his own part, and gave little
trouble.  His great delight was to gaze first out of one window, and
then out of the opposite one; either blinking as the great sails
drove by, as if they would strike him in the face, or watching the
shadows of them invisible, as they passed like noon-day ghosts over
the grass.

His habit of taking himself off on solitary expeditions neither the
miller's hazel-stick nor Mrs. Lake's treacle-stick could cure by
force or favor.

One November evening, just after tea, Jan disappeared, and the
yellow kitten also.  When his bed-time came, Mrs. Lake sought him
high and low, and Abel went carefully, mill-candlestick in hand,
through every floor, from the millstones to the machinery, but in
vain.  Neither he nor the kitten was to be found.

It was when the kitten, in chase of her own tail, tumbled in
sideways through the round-house door, that Mrs. Lake remembered
that Jan might possibly have gone out, and she ran out after him.

The air was chill and fresh, but not bitterly cold.  The moon rode
high in the dark heavens, and a flock of small white clouds passed
slowly before its face and spread over the sky.  The shadows of the
driving sails fell clearly in the moonlight, and flitted over the
grass more quickly than the clouds went by the moon.

Mrs. Lake was not susceptible to effects of scenery, and she was
thinking of Jan.  As she ran round the windmill, she struck her foot
against what proved to be his body, and, stooping, saw that he was
lying on his face.  But when she snatched him up with a cry of
terror, she found that he was not dead, nor even hurt, but only
weeping pettishly.

In the first revulsion of feeling from her fright, she was rather
disposed to shake her recovered treasure, as a relief to her own
excitement.  But Abel, whose first sight of Jan was as the light of
the mill-candle fell on his tear-stained face, said tenderly, "What
be amiss, Janny?"

"Jan can't make un," sobbed his foster-brother.

"What can't Janny make?  Tell Abel, then," said the nurse-boy.

Jan stuck his fists into his eyes, which were drying fast, and
replied, "Jan can't make the moon and the clouds, Abel dear!"

And Abel's candle being at that moment blown out by a gust of wind,
he could see Jan's slate and pencil lying at some distance apart
upon the short grass.

On the dark ground of the slate he had made a round, white, full
moon with his soft slate-pencil, and had tried hard to draw each
cloud as it passed.  But the rapid changes had baffled him, and the
pencil-marks were gray compared with the whiteness of the clouds and
the brightness of the moon, and the slate, though dark, was a
mockery of the deep, deep depths of the night-sky.

And in his despair he had flung the slate one way and the pencil
another, and there they lay under the moonlight; and the sandy
kitten, who could see more clearly on this occasion than any one
else, was dancing a fandango upon poor Jan's unfinished sketch.



CHAPTER XII.

THE WHITE HORSE.--COMROGUES.--MOERDYK.--GEORGE CONFIDES IN THE CHEAP
JACK--WITH RESERVATION.

When the Cheap Jack's horse came to the brow of the hill, it
stopped, and with drooping neck stood still as before.  The Cheap
Jack was busy with George, and it was at no word from him that the
poor beast paused.  It knew at what point to wait, and it waited.
There was little temptation to go on.  The road down the hill had
just been mended with flints; some of these were the size of an
average turnip, and the hill was steep.  So the old horse poked out
his nose, and stood almost dozing, till the sound of the Cheap
Jack's shuffling footsteps caused him to prick his ears, and brace
his muscles for a fresh start.

The miller's man came also, who was sulky, whilst the Cheap Jack was
civil.  He gave his horse a cut across the knees, to remind him to
plant his feet carefully among the sharp boulders; and then,
choosing a smooth bit by the side of the road, he and George went
forward together.

"You've took to picters, I see," said George, nodding towards the
cart.

"So I have, my dear," said the Cheap Jack; "any thing for a
livelihood; an HONEST livelihood, you know, George."  And he winked
at the miller's man, who relaxed his sulkiness for a guffaw.

"YOU'VE had so little in my way lately, George," the hunchback
continued, looking sharply sideways up at his companion.  "Sly
business has been slack, my dear, eh?"

But George made no answer, and the Cheap Jack, after relieving his
feelings by another cut at the horse, changed the subject.

"That's a sharp little brat of the miller's," said he, alluding to
Jan.  "And he ain't much like the others.  Old-fashioned, too.
Children mostly likes the gay picters, and worrits their mothers for
'em, bless 'em!  But he picked out an ancient-looking thing,--came
from a bankrupt pawnshop, my dear, in a lot.  I almost think I let
it go too cheap; but that's my failing.  And a beggarly place like
this ain't like London.  In London there's a place for every thing,
my dear, and shops for old goods as well as new, and customers too;
and the older and dirtier some things is, the more they fetches."

There was a pause, for George did not speak; and the Cheap Jack,
bent upon amiability, repeated his remark,--"A sharp little brat,
too!"

"What be 'ee harping on about him for?" asked George, suspiciously.
"I knows what I knows about un, but that's no business of yours."

"You know about most things, my dear," said the Cheap Jack,
flatteringly.  "They'll have to get up very early that catch you
napping.  But what about the child, George?"

"Never you mind," said George.  "But he ain't none of the miller's,
I'll tell 'ee that; and he ain't the missus's neither."

"What is he to YOU, my dear?" asked the dwarf, curiously, and,
getting no answer, he went on:  "He'd be useful in a good many
lines.  He'd not do bad in a circus, but he'd draw prime as a young
prodigy."

George looked round, "You be thinking of stealing HE then, as well
as" -

"Hush, my dear," said the dwarf.  "No, no, I don't want him.  But
there was a good deal of snatching young kids done in my young days;
for sweeps, destitute orphans, juvenile performers, and so on."

"HE wouldn't suit you," grinned George.  "A comes of genteel folk,
and a's not hard enough for how you'd treat un."

"You're out there, George," said the dwarf.  "Human beings is like
'osses; it's the genteelest as stands the most.  'Specially if
they've been well fed when they was babies."

At this point the Cheap Jack was interrupted by his horse stumbling
over a huge, jagged lump of flint, that, with the rest of the road-
mending, was a disgrace to a highway of a civilized country.  A
rate-payer or a horse-keeper might have been excused for losing his
temper with the authorities of the road-mending department; but the
Cheap Jack's wrath fell upon his horse.  He beat him over the knees
for stumbling, and across the hind legs for slipping, and over his
face for wincing, and accompanied his blows with a torrent of abuse.

What a moment that must have been for Balaam's ass, in which she
found voice to remonstrate against the unjust blows, which have,
nevertheless, fallen pretty thickly ever since upon her descendants
and their fellow-servants of ungrateful man!  From how many patient
eyes that old reproach, of long service ill-requited, yet speaks
almost as plainly as the voice that "rebuked the madness of the
prophet!"

The Cheap Jack's white horse had a point of resemblance to the
"genteel human beings" of whom he had been speaking.  It had "come
of a good stock," and had seen better and kinder days; and to it,
also, in its misfortunes, there remained that nobility of spirit
which rises in proportion to the ills it meets with.  The poor old
thing was miserably weak, and sore and jaded, and the flints were
torture.  But it rallied its forces, gave a desperate struggle, and
got the cart safely to the bottom of the hill.  Here the road turned
sharply, and the horse went on.  But after a few paces it stopped as
before; this time in front of a small public-house, where trembling,
and bathed in perspiration, it waited for its master.

The public-house was a small dark, dingy-looking hovel, with a
reputation fitted to its appearance.

A dirty, grim-looking man nodded to the Cheap Jack and George as
they entered, and a girl equally dirty, but much handsomer, brought
glasses of spirits, to which the friends applied themselves, at the
Cheap Jack's expense.  George grew more sociable, and the Cheap Jack
reproached him with want of confidence in his friends.

"You're so precious sharp, my dear," said the hunchback, who knew
well on what point George liked to be flattered, "that you
overreaches yourself.  I don't complain--after all the business
we've done together--that it's turned slack all of a sudden.  You
says they're down on you, and that's enough for me.  I don't
complain that you've got your own plans and keeps 'em as secret as
the grave, but I says you'll regret it.  If you was a good scholar,
George, you could do without friends, you're so precious sharp.  But
you're no scholar, my dear, and you'll be let in yet, by a worse
friend than Cheap John."

George so bitterly regretted his want of common learning, and the
stupidity which made him still slow to decipher print, and utterly
puzzled by writing, that the Cheap Jack's remarks told strongly.
These, and the conversation they had had on the hill, recalled to
his mind a matter which was still a mystery to the miller's man.

"Look here, Jack," said he, leaning across the dirty little table;
"if you be such a good scholar, what do M O E R D Y K spell?"

"Say it again, George," said the dwarf.  But when, after that, he
still looked puzzled, George laughed long and loudly.

"You be a good scholar!" he cried.  "You be a fine friend, too, for
a iggerant man.  If a can't tell the first word of a letter, 'tis
likely 'ee could read the whole, too!"

"The first word of a LETTER, eh?" said the dwarf.

"The very first," said George.  "'Tis a long way you'd get in it,
and stuck at the start!"

"Up in the corner, at the top, eh?" said the dwarf.

"So it be," said George, and he laughed no longer.

"It's the name of a place, then," said the Cheap Jack; "and it ain't
to be expected I should know the names of all the places in the
world, George, my dear."

It was a great triumph for the Cheap Jack, as George's face
betrayed.  If George had trusted him a little more, he might have
known the meaning of the mysterious word years ago.  The name of a
place!  The place from which the letter was written.  The place
where something might be learned about the writer of the letter, and
of the gentleman to whom it was written.  For George knew so much.
It was written to a gentleman, and to a gentleman who had money, and
who had secrets; and, therefore, a gentleman from whom money might
be got, by interfering in his secrets.

The miller's man was very ignorant and very stupid, in spite of a
certain low cunning not at all incompatible with gross ignorance.
He had no knowledge of the world.  His very knowledge of
malpractices and mischief was confined to the evil doings of one or
two other ill-conditioned country lads like himself, who robbed
their neighbors on dark nights, and disposed of the spoil by the
help of such men as the Cheap Jack and the landlord of the public-
house at the bottom of the hill.

But by loitering about on that stormy night years ago, when he
should have been attending to the mill, he had picked up enough to
show him that the strange gentleman had no mind to have his
proceedings as to the little Jan generally known.  This and some
sort of traditional idea that "sharp," though penniless men had at
times wrung a great deal of money from rich people, by threatening
to betray their secrets, was the sole foundation of George's hopes
in connection with the letter.  It was his very ignorance which
hindered him from seeing the innumerable chances against his getting
to know any thing important enough, even if he could use his
information, to procure a bribe.

He had long given up the idea as hopeless, though he had kept the
letter, but it revived when the Cheap Jack solved the puzzle which
Abel could not explain, and George finally promised to let his
friend read the whole letter for him.  He also allowed that it
concerned Jan, or that he supposed it to do so.  He related Jan's
history, and confessed that he had picked up the letter, which was
being blown about near the mill, on the night of Jan's arrival.

In this statement there was some truth, and some falsehood; for in
the opinion of the miller's man, if your own interest obliged you to
confide in a friend, it was at least wise to hedge the confidence by
not telling all the truth, or by qualifying it with lies.

This mental process was, however, at least equally familiar to the
Cheap Jack, and he did not hesitate, in his own mind, to feel sure
that the letter had not been found, but stolen.  In which he was
farther from the truth than if he had simply believed George.

But then he was not in the neighborhood five years back, and, as it
happened, he had never heard of the lost pocket-book.



CHAPTER XIII.

GEORGE AS A MONEYED MAN.--SAL.--THE "WHITE HORSE."-- THE WEDDING.--
THE WINDMILLER'S WIFE FORGETS, AND REMEMBERS TOO LATE.

Excitement, the stifling atmosphere of the public-house, and the
spirits he had drunk at his friend's expense, had somewhat confused
the brains of the miller's man by the time that the Cheap Jack rose
to go.  George was, as a rule, sober beyond the wont of the rustics
of the district, chiefly from parsimony.  When he could drink at
another man's expense, he was not always prudent.

"So you've settled to go, my dear?" said the dwarf, as they stood
together by the cart.  "Business being slack, and parties
unpleasantly suspicious, eh?"

"Never you mind," said George, who felt very foolish, and hoped
himself successful in looking very wise; "I be going to set up for
myself; I'm tired of slaving for another man."

"Quite right, too," said the dwarf; "but all businesses takes money,
of which, my dear, I doesn't doubt you've plenty.  You always took
care of Number One, when you did business with Cheap John."

At that moment, George felt himself a sort of embodiment of shrewd
wisdom; he had taken another sip from the glass, which was still in
his hand, and the only drawback to the sense of magnified cunning by
which his ideas seemed to be illumined was a less pleasant feeling
that they were perpetually slipping from his grasp.  To the familiar
idea of outwitting the Cheap Jack he held fast, however.

"It be nothin' to thee what a have," he said slowly; "but a don't
mind 'ee knowin' so much, Jack, because 'ee can't get at un; haw,
haw!  Not unless 'ee robs the savings-bank."

The dwarf's eyes twinkled, and he affected to secure some pictures
that hung low, as he said carelessly, -

"Savings-banks be good places for a poor man to lay by in.  They
takes small sums, and a few shillings comes in useful to a honest
man, George, my dear, if they doesn't go far in business."

"Shillings!" cried George, indignantly; "pounds!"  And then,
doubtful if he had not said too much, he added, "A don't so much
mind 'ee knowing, Jack, because 'ee can't get at 'em!"

"It's a pity you're such a poor scholar, George," said the Cheap
Jack, turning round, and looking full at his friend; "you're so
sharp, but for that, my dear.  You don't think you counts the money
over in your head till you makes it out more than it is, now, eh?"

"A can keep things in my yead," said George, "better than most folks
can keep a book; I knows what I has, and what other folks can't get
at.  I knows how I put un in.  First, the five-pound bill" -

"They must have stared to see you bring five pound in a lump,
George, my dear!" said the hunchback.  "Was it wise, do you think?"

"Gearge bean't such a vool as a looks," replied the miller's man.
"A took good care to change it first, Cheap John, and a put it in by
bits."

"You're a clever customer, George," said his friend.  "Well, my
dear?  First, the five-pound bill, and then?"

George looked puzzled, and then, suddenly, angry.  "What be that to
you?" he asked, and forthwith relapsed into a sulky fit, from which
the Cheap Jack found it impossible to rouse him.  All attempts to
renew the subject, or to induce the miller's man to talk at all,
proved fruitless.  The Cheap Jack insisted, however, on taking a
friendly leave.

"Good-by, my dear," said he, "till the mop.  You knows my place in
the town, and I shall expect you."

The miller's man only replied by a defiant nod, which possibly meant
that he would come, but had some appearance of expressing only a
sarcastic wish that the Cheap Jack might see him on the occasion
alluded to.

In obedience to a yell from its master, the white horse now started
forward, and it is not too much to say that the journey to town was
not made more pleasant for the poor beast by the fact that the Cheap
Jack had a good deal of long-suppressed fury to vent upon somebody.

It was perhaps well for the bones of the white horse that, just as
they entered the town, the Cheap Jack brushed against a woman on the
narrow foot-path, who having turned to remonstrate in no very civil
terms, suddenly checked herself, and said in a low voice, "Juggling
Jack!"

The dwarf started, and looked at the woman with a puzzled air.

She was a middle-aged woman, in the earlier half of middle age; she
was shabbily dressed, and had a face that would not have been ill-
looking, but that the upper lip was long and cleft, and the lower
one unusually large.  As the Cheap Jack still stared in silence, she
burst into a noisy laugh, saying, "More know Jack the Fool than Jack
the Fool knows."  But, even as she spoke, a gleam of recognition
suddenly spread over the hunchback's face, and, putting out his
hand, he said, "Sal! YOU HERE, my dear?"

"The air of London don't agree with me just now," was the reply;
"and how are you, Jack?"

"The country air's just beginning to disagree with me, my dear,"
said the hunchback; "but I'm glad to see you, Sal.  Come in here, my
dear, and let's have a talk, and a little refreshment."

The place of refreshment to which the dwarf alluded was another
public-house, the White Horse by name.  There was no need to bid the
Cheap Jack's white horse to pause here; he stopped of himself at
every public-house; nineteen times out of twenty to the great
convenience of his master, for which he got no thanks; the twentieth
time the hunchback did not want to stop, and he was lavish of abuse
of the beast's stupidity in coming to a standstill.

The white horse drooped his soft white nose and weary neck for a
long, long time under the effigy of his namesake swinging overhead,
and when the Cheap Jack did come out, he seemed so preoccupied that
the tired beast got home with fewer blows than usual.

He unloaded his cart mechanically, as if in a dream; but when he
touched the pictures, they seemed to awaken a fresh train of
thought.  He stamped one of his little feet spitefully on the
ground, and, with a pretty close imitation of George's dialect, said
bitterly, "Gearge bean't such a vool as a looks!" adding, after a
pause, "I'd do a deal to pay HIM off!"

As he turned into the house, he said thoughtfully, "Sal's precious
sharp; she allus was.  And a fine woman, too, is Sal!"


Not long after the incidents just related, it happened that business
called Mrs. Lake to the neighboring town.  She seldom went out, but
a well-to-do aunt was sick, and wished to see her; and the miller
gave his consent to her going.

She met the milk-cart at the corner of the road, and so was driven
to the town, and she took Jan with her.

He had begged hard to go, and was intensely amused by all he saw.
The young Lakes were so thoroughly in the habit of taking every
thing, whether commonplace or curious, in the same phlegmatic
fashion, that Jan's pleasure was a new pleasure to his foster-
mother, and they enjoyed themselves greatly.

As they were making their way towards the inn where they were to
pick up a neighbor, in whose cart they were to be driven home, their
progress was hindered by a crowd, which had collected near one of
the churches.

Mrs. Lake was one of those people who lead colorless lives, and are
without mental resources, to whom a calamity is almost delightful,
from the stimulus it gives to the imagination, and the relief it
affords to the monotony of existence.

"Oh, dear! oh, dear!" she cried, peering through the crowd:  "I
wonder what it is.  'Tis likely 'tis a man in a fit now, I shouldn't
wonder, or a cart upset, and every soul killed, as it might be
ourselves going home this very evening.  Dear, dear! 'tis a
venturesome thing to leave home, too!"

"'Ere they be! 'ere they be!" roared a wave of the crowd, composed
of boys, breaking on Mrs. Lake and Jan at this point.

"'Tis the body, sure as death!" murmured the windmiller's wife; but,
as she spoke, the street boys set up a lusty cheer, and Jan, who had
escaped to explore on his own account, came running back, crying, -

"'Tis the Cheap Jack, mammy! and he's been getting married."

If any thing could have rivalled the interest of a sudden death for
Mrs. Lake, it must have been such a wedding as this.  She hurried to
the front, and was just in time to catch sight of the happy couple
as they passed down the street, escorted by a crowd of
congratulating boys.

"Well done, Cheap John!" roared one.  "You've chose a beauty, you
have," cried another.  "She's 'arf a 'ead taller, anyway," added a
third.  "Many happy returns of the day, Jack!" yelled a fourth.

Jan was charmed, and again and again he drew Mrs. Lake's attention
to the fact that it really WAS the Cheap Jack.

But the windmiller's wife was staring at the bride.  Not merely
because the bride is commonly considered the central figure of a
wedding-party, but because her face seemed familiar to Mrs. Lake,
and she could not remember where she had seen her.  Though she could
remember nothing, the association seemed to be one of pain.  In vain
she beat her brains.  Memory was an almost uncultivated quality with
her, and, like the rest of her intellectual powers, had a nervous,
skittish way of deserting her in need, as if from timidity.

Mrs. Lake could sometimes remember things when she got into bed, but
on this occasion her pillow did not assist her; and the windmiller
snubbed her for making "such a caddle" about a woman's face she
might have seen anywhere or nowhere, for that matter; so she got no
help from him.

And it was not till after the Cheap Jack and his wife had left the
neighborhood, that one night (she was in bed) it suddenly "came to
her," as she said, that the dwarf's bride was the woman who had
brought Jan to the mill, on the night of the great storm.



CHAPTER XIV.

SUBLUNARY ART.--JAN GOES TO SCHOOL.--DAME DATCHETT AT HOME.--JAN'S
FIRST SCHOOL SCRAPE.--JAN DEFENDS HIMSELF.

Even the hero of a tale cannot always be heroic, nor of romantic or
poetic tastes.

The wonderful beauty of the night sky and the moon had been fully
felt by the artist-nature of the child Jan; but about this time he
took to the study of a totally different subject,--pigs.

It was the force of circumstances which led Jan to "make pigs" on
his slate so constantly, instead of nobler subjects; and it dated
from the time when his foster-mother began to send him with the
other children to school at Dame Datchett's.

Dame Datchett's cottage was the last house on one side of the
village main street.  It was low, thatched, creeper-covered, and had
only one floor, and two rooms,--the outer room where the Dame kept
her school, and the inner one where she slept.  Dame Datchett's
scholars were very young, and it is to be hoped that the chief
objects of their parents in paying for their schooling were to
insure their being kept safely out of the way for a certain portion
of each day, and the saving of wear and tear to clothes and shoes.
It is to be hoped so, because this much of discipline was to some
extent accomplished.  As to learning, Dame Datchett had little
enough herself, and was quite unable to impart even that, except to
a very industrious and intelligent pupil.

Her school appurtenances were few and simple.  From one of them
arose Jan's first scrape at school.  It was a long, narrow
blackboard, on which the alphabet had once been painted white,
though the letters were now so faded that the Dame could no longer
distinguish them, even in spectacles.

The scrape came about thus.

As he stood at the bottom of the little class which gathered in a
semicircle around the Dame's chair, his young eyes could see the
faded letters quite clearly, though the Dame's could not.

"Say th' alphabet, childern!" cried Dame Datchett; and as the class
shouted the names of the letters after her, she made a show of
pointing to each with a long "sallywithy" wand cut from one of the
willows in the water-meadows below.  She ran the sallywithy along
the board at what she esteemed a judicious rate, to keep pace with
the shouted alphabet, but, as she could not see the letters, her
tongue and her wand were not in accord.  Little did the wide-
mouthed, white-headed youngsters of the village heed this, but it
troubled Jan's eyes; and when--in consequence of her rubbing her
nose with her disengaged hand--the sallywithy slipped to Q as the
Dame cried F, Jan brought the lore he had gained from Abel to bear
upon her inaccuracy.

"'Tis a Q, not a F," he said, boldly and aloud.

A titter ran through the class, and the biggest and stupidest boy
found the joke so overwhelming that he stretched his mouth from ear
to ear, and doubled himself up with laughter, till it looked as if
his corduroy-breeched knee were a turnip, and he about to munch it.

The Dame dropped her sallywithy and began to feel under her chair.

"Which be the young varment as said a F was a Q?" she rather
unfairly inquired.

"A didn't say a F was a Q"-- began Jan; but a chorus of cowardly
little voices drowned him, and curried favor with the Dame by
crying, "Tis Jan Lake, the miller's son, missus."

And the big boy, conscious of his own breach of good manners, atoned
for it by officiously dragging Jan to Dame Datchett's elbow.

"Hold un vor me," said the Dame, settling her spectacles firmly on
her nose.

And with infinite delight the great booby held Jan to receive his
thwacks from the strap which the Dame had of late years substituted
for the birch rod.  And as Jan writhed, he chuckled as heartily as
before, it being an amiable feature in the character of such clowns
that, so long as they can enjoy a guffaw at somebody's expense, the
subject of their ridicule is not a matter of much choice or
discrimination.

After the first angry sob, Jan set his teeth and bore his punishment
in a proud silence, quite incomprehensible by the small rustics
about him, who, like the pigs of the district, were in the habit of
crying out in good time before they were hurt as a preventive
measure.

Strangely enough, it gave the biggest boy the impression that Jan
was "poor-spirited," and unable to take his own part,--a temptation
to bully him too strong to be resisted.

So when the school broke up, and the children were scattering over
the road and water-meads, the wide-mouthed boy came up to Jan and
snatched his slate from him.

"Give Jan his slate!" cried Jan, indignantly.

He was five years old, but the other was seven, and he held the
slate above his head.

"And who be JAN, then, thee little gallus-bird?" said he,
tauntingly.

"I be Jan!" answered the little fellow, defiantly.  "Jan Lake, the
miller's son.  Give I his slate!"

"Thee's not a miller's son," said the other; and the rest of the
children began to gather round.

"I be a miller's son," reiterated Jan.  "And I've got a miller's
thumb, too;" and he turned up his little thumb for confirmation of
the fact.

"Thee's not a miller's son," repeated the other, with a grin.
"Thee's nobody's child, thee is.  Master Lake's not thy vather, nor
Mrs. Lake bean't thy mother.  Thee was brought to the mill in a sack
of grist, thee was."

In saying which, the boy repeated a popular version of Jan's
history.

If any one had been present outside Dame Datchett's cottage at that
moment who had been in the windmill when Jan first came to it, he
would have seen a likeness so vivid between the face of the child
and the face of the man who brought him to the mill as would have
seemed to clear up at least one point of the mystery of his
parentage.

Pride and wrath convulsed every line of the square, quaint face, and
seemed to narrow it to the likeness of the man's, as, with his black
eyes blazing with passion, Jan flew at his enemy.

The boy still held Jan's slate on high, and with a derisive "haw!
haw!" he brought it down heavily above Jan's head.  But Jan's eye
was quick, and very true.  He dodged the blow, which fell on the
boy's own knees, and then flew at him like a kitten in a tiger fury.

They were both small and easily knocked over, and in an instant they
were sprawling on the road, and cuffing, and pulling, and kicking,
and punching with about equal success, except that the bigger boy
prudently roared and howled all the time, in the hope of securing
some assistance in his favor.

"Dame Datchett!  Missus!  Murder!  Yah!  Boohoo!  The little varment
be a throttling I."

But Mrs. Datchett was deaf.  Also, she not unnaturally considered
that, in looking after "the young varments" in school-hours, she
fully earned their weekly pence, and was by no means bound to
disturb herself because they squabbled in the street.

Meanwhile Jan gradually got the upper hand of his lubberly and far
from courageous opponent, whose smock he had nearly torn off his
back.  He had not spent any of his breath in calling for aid, but
now, in reply to the boy's cries for mercy and release, he shouted,
"What be my name, now, thee big gawney?  Speak, or I'll drottle
'ee."

"Jan Lake," said his vanquished foe.  "Let me go!  Yah! yah!"

"Whose son be I?" asked the remorseless Jan.

"Abel Lake's, the miller!  Boohoo, boohoo!" sobbed the boy.

"And what be this, then, Willum Smith?" was Jan's final question, as
he brought his thumb close to his enemy's eye.

"It be the miller's thumb thee's got, Jan Lake," was the
satisfactory answer.



CHAPTER XV.

WILLUM GIVES JAN SOME ADVICE.--THE CLOCK FACE.--THE HORNET AND THE
DAME.--JAN DRAWS PIGS.--JAN AND HIS PATRONS.--KITTY CHUTER.--THE
FIGHT.--MASTER CHUTER'S PREDICTION.

Jan went back to school.  Though his foster-mother was indignant,
and ready to do battle both with Dame Datchett and with William
Smith's aunt (with whom, in lieu of parents, the boy lived), and
though Abel expressed his anxiety to go down and "teach Willum to
vight one of his own zize," Jan steadily rejected their help, and
said manfully, "Jan bean't feared of un.  I whopped un, I did."

So Mrs. Lake doctored his bruises, and sent him off to school again.
She yielded the more readily that she felt certain that the
windmiller would not take the child's part against the Dame.

No further misfortune befell him.  William, if loutish and a bit of
a bully on occasion, was not an ill-natured child; and, having a
turn for humor of a broad, unintellectual sort, he and Jan became
rather friendly on the common, but reprehensible ground of playing
pranks, which kept the school in a titter and the Dame in doubt.
And, if detected, they did not think a dose of the strap by any
means too high a price to pay for their fun.

For William's sufferings under that instrument of discipline were
not to be measured by his doleful howlings and roarings, nor even by
his ready tears.

"What be 'ee so voolish for as to say nothin' when her wollops 'ee?"
he asked of Jan, in a very friendly spirit, one day.  "Thee should
holler as loud as 'ee can.  Them that hollers and cries murder she
soon stops for, does Dame Datchett.  She be feared of their mothers
hearing 'em, and comin' after 'em."

Jan could not lower himself to accept such base advice; but his
superior adroitness did much to balance the advantage William had
over him, in a less scrupulous pride.

As to learning, I fear that, after the untoward consequences of his
zeal for the alphabet, Jan made no effort to learn any thing but
cat's-cradle from his neighbors.

On one other occasion, indeed, he was somewhat over-zealous, and
only escaped the strap for his reward by a friendly diversion on the
part of his friend.  The Dame had a Dutch clock in the corner of her
kitchen, the figures on the face of which were the common Arabic
ones, and not Roman.  And as one of the few things the Dame
professed was to "teach the clock," she would, when the figures had
been recited after the fashion in which her scholars shouted over
the alphabet, set those who had advanced to the use of slates to
copy the figures from the clock-face.

Slowly and sorrowfully did William toil over this lesson.  Again and
again did he rub out his ill-proportioned fives, with so greasy a
finger and such a superabundance of moisture as to make a sort of
puddle, into which he dug heavily, and broke two pencils.

"A vive be such an akkerd vigger," he muttered, in reply to Jan, who
had looked up inquiringly as the second pencil snapped.  "'Twill
come aal right, though, when a dries."

It did dry, but any thing but right.  Jan rubbed out the mass of
thick and blotted strokes, and when the Dame was not looking, he
made William's figures for him.  Jan was behindhand in spelling, but
to copy figures was no difficulty to him.

Having helped his friend thus, he pulled his smock, to draw
attention to his own slate.  The other children wrote so slowly that
time had hung heavy on his hands; and, instead of copying the
figures in a row, he had made a drawing of the clock-face, with the
figures on it; but instead of the hands, he had put eyes, nose, and
mouth, and below the mouth a round gray blot, which William
instantly recognized for a portrait of the mole on Dame Datchett's
chin.  This brilliant caricature so tickled him, that he had a fit
of choking from suppressed laughter; and he and Jan, being detected
"in mischief," were summoned with their slates to the Dame's chair.

William came off triumphant; but when the Dame caught sight of Jan's
slate, without minutely examining his work, she said, "Zo thee's
been scraaling on thee slate, instead of writing thee figures," and
at once began to fumble beneath her chair.

But William had slightly moved the strap with his foot, as he stood
with a perfectly unmoved and vacant countenance beside the Dame,
which made some delay; and as Mrs. Datchett bent lower on the right
side of her chair, William began upon the left a "hum," which, with
a close imitation of the crowing of a cock, the grunting of a pig,
and the braying of a donkey, formed his chief stock of
accomplishments.

"Drat the thing!  Where be un?" said the Dame, endangering her
balance in the search.

"B-z-z-z-z!" went William behind the chair; and he added, sotto
voce, to Jan, "She be as dunch as a bittle."

At last the Dame heard, and looked round.  "Be that a harnet,
missus, do 'ee think?" said William, with a face as guileless as a
babe's.

Dame Datchett rose in terror.  William bent to look beneath her
chair for the hornet, and of course repeated his hum.  As the hornet
could neither be found nor got rid of, the alarmed old lady broke up
the school, and went to lay a trap of brown sugar outside the window
for her enemy.  And so Jan escaped a beating.

But this and the story of his first fight are digressions.  It yet
remains to be told how he took to drawing pigs.

Dame Datchett's cottage was the last on one side of the street; but
it did not face the street, but looked over the water-meadows, and
the little river, and the bridge.

As Jan sat on the end of the form, he could look through the Dame's
open door, the chief view from which was of a place close by the
bridge, and on the river's bank, where the pig-minders of the
village brought their pigs to water.  Day after day, when the tedium
of doing nothing under Dame Datchett's superintendence was
insufficiently relieved to Jan's active mind by pinching "Willum"
till he giggled, or playing cat's-cradle with one of his foster-
brothers, did he welcome the sight of a flock of pigs with their
keeper, scuttling past the Dame's door, and rushing snorting to the
stream.

Much he envied the freedom of the happy pig-minder, whilst the
vagaries of the pigs were an unfailing source of amusement.

The degree and variety of expression in a pig's eye can only be
appreciated by those who have studied pigs as Morland must have
studied them.  The pertness, the liveliness, the humor, the love of
mischief, the fiendish ingenuity and perversity of which pigs are
capable, can be fully known to the careworn pig-minder alone.  When
they are running away,--and when are they not running away?--they
have an action with the hind legs very like a donkey in a state of
revolt.  But they have none of the donkey's too numerous grievances.
And if donkeys squealed at every switch, as pigs do, their
undeserved sufferings would have cried loud enough for vengeance
before this.

Jan's opportunities for studying pigs were good.  As the smallest
and swiftest of the flock, his tail tightly curled, and
indescribable jauntiness in his whole demeanor, came bounding to the
river's brink, followed by his fellows, driving, pushing, snuffing,
winking, and gobbling, and lastly by a small boy in a large coat,
with a long switch, Jan was witness of the whole scene from Dame
Datchett's door.  And, as he sat with his slate and pencil before
him, he naturally took to drawing the quaint comic faces and
expressive eyes of the herd, and their hardly less expressive backs
and tails; and to depicting the scenes which took place when the
pigs had enjoyed their refreshment, and with renewed vigor led their
keeper in twenty different directions, instead of going home.  Back,
up the road, where he could hardly drive them at the point of the
switch a few hours before; by sharp turns into Squire Ammaby's
grounds, or the churchyard; and helter-skelter through the water-
meadows.

The fame of Jan's "pitcher-making" had gone before him to Dame
Datchett's school by the mouths of his foster-brothers and sisters,
and he found a dozen little voices ready to dictate subjects for his
pencil.

"Make a 'ouse, Janny Lake."  "Make thee vather's mill, Janny Lake."
"Make a man.  Make Dame Datchett.  Make the parson.  Make the Cheap
Jack.  Make Daddy Angel.  Make Master Chuter.  Make a oss--cow--
ship--pig!"

But the popularity obtained by Jan's pigs soon surpassed that of all
his other performances.

"Make pigs for I, Janny Lake!" and "Make pigs for I, too!" was a
sort of whispering chorus that went on perpetually under the Dame's
nose.  But when she found that it led to no disturbance, that the
children only huddled round the child Jan and his slate like eager
scholars round a teacher, Dame Datchett was wise enough to be
thankful that Jan possessed a power she had never been able to
acquire,--that he could "keep the young varments quiet."

"He be most's good's a monitor," thought the Dame; and she took a
nap, and Jan's genius held the school together.

The children tried other influences besides persuasion.

"Jan Lake, I've brought thee an apple.  Draa out a pig for I on a's
slate."

Jan had a spirit of the most upright and honorable kind.  He never
took an unfair advantage, and to the petty cunning which was
"Willum's" only idea of wisdom he seemed by nature incapable of
stooping.  But in addition to, and alongside of, his artistic
temperament, there appeared to be in him no small share of the
spirit of a trader.  The capricious, artistic spirit made him fitful
in his use even of the beloved slate; but, when he was least
inclined to draw, the offer of something he very much wanted would
spur him to work; and in the spirit of a true trader, he worked
well.

He would himself have made a charming study for a painter, as he sat
surrounded by his patrons, who watched him with gaping mouths of
wonderment, as his black eyes moved rapidly to and fro between the
river's brink and his slate, and his tiny fingers steered the pencil
into cunning lines which "made pigs."  "The very moral!" as William
declared, smacking his corduroy breeches with delight.

Sometimes Jan hardly knew that they were there, he was so absorbed
in his work.  His eyes glowed with that strong pleasure which comes
in the very learning of any art, perhaps of any craft.  Now and
then, indeed, his face would cloud with a different expression, and
in fits of annoyance, like that in which his foster-mother found him
outside the windmill, he would break his pencils, and ruthlessly
destroy sketches with which his patrons would have been quite
satisfied.  But at other moments his face would twinkle with a very
sunshine of smiles, as he was conscious of having caught exactly the
curve which expressed obstinacy in this pig's back, or the air of
reckless defiance in that other's tail.

And so he learned little or nothing, and improved in his drawing,
and kept the school quiet, and had always a pocket well filled with
sweet things, nails, string, tops, balls, and such treasures, earned
by his art.

One day as he sat "making pigs" for one after another of the group
of children round him, a pig of especial humor having drawn a murmur
of delight from the circle, this murmur was dismally echoed by a sob
from a little maid on the outside of the group.  It was Master
Chuter's little daughter, a pretty child, with an oval, dainty-
featured face, and a prim gentleness about her, like a good little
girl in a good little story.  The intervening young rustics began to
nudge each other and look back at her.

"Kitty Chuter be crying!" they whispered.

"What be amiss with 'ee, then, Kitty Chuter?" said Jan, looking up
from his work; and the question was passed on with some impatience,
as her tears prevented her reply.  "What be amiss with 'ee?"

"Janny Lake have never made a pig for I," sobbed the little maid,
with her head dolefully inclined to her left shoulder, and her oval
face pulled to a doubly pensive length.  "I axed my vather to let me
get him a posy, and a said I might.  And I got un some vine Bloody
Warriors, and a heap of Boy's Love off our big bush, that smelled
beautiful.  And vather says a can have some water-blobs off our pond
when they blows.  But Tommy Green met I as a was coming down to
school, and a snatched my vlowers from me, and I begged un to let me
keep some of un, and a only laughed at me.  And I daren't go back,
for I was late; and now I've nothin' to give Janny Lake to make a
draft of a pig for I."  And, having held up for the telling of her
tale, the little maid broke down in fresh tears.

Jan finished off the tail of the pig he was drawing with a squeak of
the pencil that might have come from the pig itself and, stuffing
the slate into its owner's hands, he ran up to Kitty Chuter and
kissed her wet cheeks, saying, "Give I thee slate, Kitty Chuter, and
I'll make thee the best pig of all.  I don't want nothing from thee
for 't.  And when school's done, I'll whop Tommy Green, if I sees
him."

And forthwith, without looking from the door for studies, Jan drew a
fat sow with her little ones about her; the other children
clustering round to peep, and crying, "He've made Kitty Chuter one,
two, three, vour, VIVE pigs!"

"Ah, and there be two more you can't see, because the old un be
lying on 'em," said Jan.

"Six, seven!" William counted; and he assisted the calculation by
sticking up first a thumb and then a forefinger as he spoke.

Some who had not thought half a ball of string, or a dozen nails as
good as new, too much to pay for a single pig drawn on one side of
their slates, and only lasting as long as they could contrive to
keep the other side in use without quite smudging that one, were now
disposed to be dissatisfied with their bargains.  But as the school
broke up, and Tom Green was seen loitering on the other side of the
road, every thing was forgotten in the general desire to see Jan
carry out his threat, and "whop" a boy bigger than himself for
bullying a little girl.

Jan showed no disposition to shirk, and William acted as his friend,
and held his slate and book.

Success is not always to the just, however; and poor Jan was
terribly beaten by his big opponent, though not without giving him
some marks of the combat to carry away.

Kitty Chuter wept bitterly for Jan's bloody nose; but he comforted
her, saying, "Never mind, Kitty; if he plagues thee again, 'll fight
un again and again, till I whops he."

But his valor was not put to the proof, for Tommy Green molested her
no more.

Jan washed his face in the water-meadows, and went stout-heartedly
home, where Master Lake beat him afresh, as he ironically said, "to
teach him to vight young varments like himself instead of minding
his book."

But upon Master Chuter, of the Heart of Oak, the incident made quite
a different impression.  He was naturally pleased by Jan's
championship of his child, and, added to this, he was much impressed
by the sketch on the slate.  It was, he said, the "living likeness"
of his own sow; and, as she had seven young pigs, the portrait was
exact, allowing for the two which Jan had said were out of sight.

He gave Kitty a new slate, and kept the sketch, which he showed to
all in-comers.  He displayed it one evening to the company assembled
round the hearth of the little inn, and took occasion to propound
his views on the subject of Jan's future life.

(Master Chuter was fond of propounding his views,--a taste which was
developed by always being sure of an audience.)

"It's nothing to me," said Master Chuter, speaking of Jan, "who the
boy be.  It be no fault of his'n if he's a fondling.  And one
thing's sure enough.  Them that left him with Master Lake left
something besides him.  There was that advertisement,--you remember
that about the five-pound bill in the paper, Daddy Angel?"

"Ay, ay, Master Chuter," said Daddy Angel; "after the big storm,
five year ago.  Sartinly, Master Chuter."

"Was it ever found, do ye think?" said Master Linseed, the painter
and decorator.

"It must have been found," said the landlord; "but I bean't so sure
about it's having been given up, the notice was in so long.  And
whoever did find un must have found un at once.  But what I says is,
five-pound notes lost as easy as that comes from where there's more
of the same sort.  And, if Master Lake be paid for the boy, he can
'fford to 'prentice him when his time comes.  He've boys enough of
his own to take to the mill, and Jan do seem to have such an
uncommon turn for drawing things out, I'd try him with painting and
varnishing, if he was mine.  And I believe he'd come to signs, too!
Look at that, now!  It be small, and the boy've had no paint to lay
on, but there's the sign of the Jolly Sow for you, as natteral as
life.  You know about signs, Master Linseed," continued the
landlord.  For there was a tradition that the painter could "do
picture-signs," though he had only been known to renew lettered ones
since he came to the neighborhood.  "Master Lake should 'prentice
him with you when he's older," Master Chuter said in conclusion.

But Master Linseed did not respond warmly.  He felt it a little
beneath his dignity as a sign-painter to jump at the idea, though
the rest of the company assented in a general murmur.

"Scrawling on a slate," the painter and decorator began--and at this
point he paused, after the leisurely customs of the district, to
light his pipe at the leaden-weighted candlestick which stood near;
and then, as his hearers sat expectant, but not impatient,
proceeded:  "Scrawling on a slate is one thing, Master Chuter:
painting and decorating's another.  Painting's a trade; and not
rightly to be understood by them that's not larned it, nor to be
picked up by all as can scrawl a line here and a line there, as the
whim takes 'em.  Take oak-graining,"--and here Master Linseed paused
again, with a fine sense of effect,--"who'd ever think of taking a
comb to it as didn't know?  And for the knots, I've worked 'em--now
with a finger and now a thumb--over a shutter-front till it looked
that beautiful the man it was done for telled me himself,--'I'd
rather,' says he, 'have 'em as you've done 'em than the real thing.'
But young hands is nowhere with the knots.  They puts 'em in too
thick."

The company said, "Ay, ay!" in a tone of unbroken assent, for Master
Linseed was understood to have "come from a distance," and to "know
a good deal."  But an innkeeper stands above a painter and decorator
anywhere, and especially on his own hearth, and Master Chuter did
not mean to be put down.

"I suppose old hands were young uns once, Master Linseed," said he;
"and if the boy were never much at oak-graining, I'd back him for
sign-painting, if he were taught.  Why, the pigs he draas out, look
you.  I could cut 'em up, and not a piece missing; not a joint, nor
as much as would make a pound of sausages.  And if a draas pigs, why
not osses, why not any other kind?"

"Ay, ay!" said the company.

"I be thinking," continued Master Chuter, "of a gentlemen as draad
out that mare of my father's that ran in the mail.  You remember the
coaches, Daddy Angel?"

"Ay, ay, Master Chuter.  Between Lonnon and Exeter a ran.  Fine days
at the Heart of Oak, then, Master Chuter."

"He weren't a sign-painter, that I knows on.  A were somethin' more
in the gentry way," said Master Chuter, not, perhaps, quite without
malice in the distinction.  "He were what they calls in genteel talk
a" -

"Artis'," said Master Linseed, removing his pipe, to supply the
missing word with a sense of superiority.

"No, not a artis'," said Master Chuter, "though it do begin with a
A, too.  'Twasn't a artis' he was, 'twas a" -

"Ammytoor," said the travelled sign-painter.

"That be it," said the innkeeper.  "A ammytoor.  And he was short of
money, I fancy, and so 'twas settled a should paint this mare of my
father's to set against the bill.  And a draad and a squinted at un,
and a squinted at un and a draad, and laid the paint on till the
pictur' looked all in a mess, and then he took un away to vinish.
But when a sent it home, I thought my vather would have had the law
of un.  I'm blessed if a hadn't given the mare four white feet, and
shoulders that wouldn't have pulled a vegetable cart; and she near-
wheeler of the mail!  I'd lay a pound bill Jan Lake would a done her
ever so much better, for as young a hand as a is, if a'd squinted at
her as long."

"Well, well, Master Chuter," said the painter and decorator, rising
to go, "let the boy draw pigs and osses for his living.  And I wish
he may find paint as easy as slate-pencil."

Master Linseed's parting words produced upon the company that
somewhat unreasonable depression which such ironical good wishes are
apt to cause; but they only roused the spirit of contradiction in
Master Chuter, and heightened his belief in Jan's talents more than
any praise from the painter could have done.

"Here's a pretty caddle about giving a boy's due!" said the
innkeeper.  "But I knows the points of a oss, and the makings of a
pig, if I bean't a sign-painter.  And, mark my words, the boy Jan
'ull out-paint Master Linseed yet."

Master Chuter spoke with triumph in his tone, but it was the triumph
of delivering his sentiments to unopposing hearers.

There were moments of greater triumph to come, of which he yet
wotted not, when the sevenfold fulfilment of his prediction should
be past dispute, and attested from his own walls by more lasting
monuments of Jan's skill than the too perishable sketch which now
stood like a text for the innkeeper on the mantelpiece of the Heart
of Oak.



CHAPTER XVI.

THE MOP.--THE SHOP.--WHAT THE CHEAP JACK'S WIFE HAD TO TELL.--WHAT
GEORGE WITHHELD.

A mop is a local name for a hiring-fair, at which young men and
women present themselves to be hired as domestic servants or farm
laborers for a year.  It was at a mop that the windmiller had hired
George, and it was at that annual festival that his long service
came to an end.  He betook himself to the town, where the fair was
going on, not with any definite intention of seeking another master,
but from a variety of reasons:  partly for a holiday, and to "see
the fun;" partly to visit the Cheap Jack, and hear what advice he
had to give, and to learn what was in the letter; partly with the
idea that something might suggest itself in the busy town as a
suitable investment for his savings and his talents.  At the worst,
he could but take another place.

The sun shone brightly on the market-place as George passed through
it.  The scene was quaint and picturesque.  Booths, travelling
shows, penny theatres, quack doctors, tumblers, profile cutters,
exhibitors and salesmen of all sorts, thronged the square, and
overflowed into a space behind, where some houses had been burnt
down and never rebuilt; whilst round the remains of the market cross
in the centre were grouped the lads and lasses "on hire."  The girls
were smartly dressed, and the young men in snowy smocks, above which
peeped waistcoats of gay colors, looked in the earlier part of the
day so spruce, that it was as lamentable to see them after the hours
of beer-drinking and shag tobacco-smoking which followed, as it was
to see what might have been a neighborly and cheerful festival
finally swamped in drunkenness and debauchery.

George's smock was white, and George's waistcoat was red, and he had
made himself smart enough, but he did not linger amongst his fellow-
servants at the Cross.  He hurried through the crowd, nodding
sheepishly in answer to a shower of chaff and greetings, and made
his way to the by-street where the Cheap Jack had a small dingy shop
for the sale of coarse pottery.  Some people were spiteful enough to
hint that the shop-trade was of much less value to him than the
store-room attached, where the goods were believed to be not all of
one kind.

The red bread-pans, pipkins, flower-pots, and so forth, were grouped
about the door with some attempt at effective display, and with
cheap prices marked in chalk upon their sides.  The window was
clean, and in it many knick-knacks of other kinds were mixed with
the smaller china ware.  And, when George entered the shop, the
hunchback's wife was behind the counter.  Like Mrs. Lake, he paused
to think where he could have seen her before; the not uncomely face
marred by an ugly mouth, in which the upper lip was long and cleft,
and the lower lip large and heavy, seemed familiar to him.  He was
still beating his brains when the Cheap Jack came in.

George had been puzzled that the woman's countenance did not seem
new to him, and he was puzzled and disturbed also that the
expression on the face of the Cheap Jack was quite new.  Whatever
the hunchback had in his head, however, he was not unfriendly in his
manner.

"Good morning, George, my dear!" he cried, cheerfully; "you've seen
my missus before, eh, George?"  George was just about to say no,
when he remembered that he had seen the woman, and when and where.

"Dreadful night that was, Mr. Sannel!" said the Cheap Jack's wife,
with a smile on her large mouth.  George assented, and by the
hospitable invitation of the newly married couple he followed them
into the dwelling part of the house, trying as he did so to decide
upon a plan for his future conduct.

Here at last was a woman who could probably tell all that he wanted
to know about the mystery on which he had hoped to trade, and--the
Cheap Jack had married her.  If any thing could be got out of the
knowledge of Jan's history, the Cheap Jack, and not George, would
get it now.  The hasty resolution to which George came was to try to
share what he could not keep entirely to himself.  He flattered
himself he could be very civil, and--he had got the letter.

It proved useful.  George was resolved not to show it until he had
got at something of what the large-mouthed woman had to tell; and,
as she wanted to see the letter, she made a virtue of necessity, and
seemed anxious to help the miller's man to the utmost of her power.

The history of her connection with Jan's babyhood was soon told, and
she told it truthfully.

Five years before her marriage to the Cheap Jack, she was a
chambermaid in a small hotel in London, and "under notice to leave."
Why--she did not deem it necessary to tell George.  In this hotel
Jan was born, and Jan's mother died.  She was a foreigner, it was
supposed, and her husband also, for they talked a foreign language
to each other.  He was not with her when she first came, but he
joined her afterwards, and was with her at her death.  So far the
Cheap Jack's wife spoke upon hearsay.  Though employed at the hotel,
which was very full, she was not sleeping in the house; she was not
on good terms with the landlady, nor even with the other servants,
and her first real connection with the matter was when the
gentleman, overhearing some "words" between her and the landlady at
the bar, abruptly asked her if she were in want of employment.  He
employed her,--to take the child to the very town where she was now
living as the Cheap Jack's wife.  He did not come with her, as he
had to attend his wife's funeral.  It was understood at the hotel
that he was going to take the body abroad for interment.  So the
porter had said.  The person to whom she was directed to bring the
child was a respectable old woman, living in the outskirts of the
town, whose business was sick-nursing.  She seemed, however, to be
comfortably off, and had not been out for some time.  She had been
nurse to the gentleman in his childhood, so she once told the Cheap
Jack's wife with tears.  But she was always shedding tears, either
over the baby, or as she sat over her big Bible, "for ever having to
wipe her spectacles, and tears running over her nose ridic'lus to
behold."  She was pious, and read the Bible aloud in the evening.
Then she had fainting fits; she could not go uphill or upstairs
without great difficulty, and she had one of her fits when she first
saw the child.  If with these infirmities of body and mind the ex-
nurse had been easily managed, the Cheap Jack's wife professed that
she could have borne it with patience.  But the old woman was
painfully shrewd, and there was no hoodwinking her.  She never
allowed the Cheap Jack's wife to go out without her, and contrived,
in spite of a hundred plans and excuses, to prevent her from
speaking to any of the townspeople alone.  Never, said Sal, never
could she have put up with it, even for the short time before the
gentleman came down to them, but for knowing it would be a paying
job.  But his arrival was the signal for another catastrophe, which
ended in Jan's becoming a child of the mill.

If the sight of the baby had nearly overpowered the old nurse, the
sight of the dark-eyed gentleman overwhelmed her yet more.  Then
they were closeted together for a long time, and the old woman's
tongue hardly ever stopped.  Sal explained that she would not have
been such a fool as to let this conversation escape her, if she
could have helped it.  She took her place at the keyhole, and had an
excuse ready for the old woman, if she should come out suddenly.
The old woman came out suddenly; but she did not wait for the
excuse.  She sent the Cheap Jack's wife civilly on an errand into
the kitchen, and then followed her, and shut the door and turned the
key upon her without hesitation, leaving her unable to hear any
thing but the tones of the conversation through the parlor wall.
She never opened the door again.  As far as the Cheap Jack's wife
could tell, the old woman seemed to be remonstrating and pleading;
the gentleman spoke now and then.  Then there was a lull, then a
thud, then a short pause, and then the parlor-door was burst open,
and the gentleman came flying towards the kitchen, and calling for
the Cheap Jack's wife.  The fact that the door was locked caused
some delay, and delay was not desirable.  The old nurse had had "a
fit."  When the doctor came, he gave no hope of her life.  She had
had heart disease for many years, he said.  In the midst of this
confusion, a letter came for the gentleman, which seemed absolutely
to distract him.  He bade Sal get the little Jan ready, and put his
clothes together, and they started that evening for the mill.  Sal
believed it was the doctor who recommended Mrs. Lake as a foster-
mother for the baby, having attended her child.  The storm came on
after they started.  The child had been very sickly ever since they
left London.  The gentleman took the Cheap Jack's wife straight back
to the station, paid her handsomely, and sent her up to town again.
She had never seen him since.  As to his name, it so happened she
had never heard it at the hotel; but when he was setting her off to
the country with the child, she asked it, and he told her that it
was Ford.  The old nurse also spoke of him as Mr. Ford, but--so Sal
fancied--with a sort of effort, which made her suspect that it was
not his real name.

"Yes, it be!" said George, who had followed the narrative with open-
mouthed interest.  "It be aal right.  I knows.  'Twas a gentleman by
the name of Ford as cried his pocket-book, and the vive-pound bill
in the papers.  'Tis aal right.  Ford--Jan Ford be the little
varment's name then, and he be gentry-born, too!  Missus Lake she
allus said so, she did, sartinly."

George was so absorbed by the flood of information which had burst
upon him all at once, and by adjusting his clumsy thoughts to the
new view of Jan, that he did not stop to think whether the Cheap
Jack and his wife had known of the lost pocket-book and the reward.
They had not.  The dark gentleman had no wish to reopen
communication with the woman he had employed.  He thought (and
rightly) that the book had fallen when he stumbled over his cloak in
getting into the carriage, and he had refused to advertise it except
in the local papers.  And at that time the Cheap Jack and Sal were
both in London.

But George's incautious speech recalled one or two facts to them,
and whilst George sat slowly endeavoring to realize that new idea,
"Master Jan Ford, full young gentleman, and at least half Frenchman"
(for of any other foreigners George knew nothing), the Cheap Jack
was pondering the words "five-pound bill," and connecting them with
George's account of his savings when they last met; and his quicker
spouse was also putting two and two together, but with a larger sum.
At the same instant the Cheap Jack inquired after George's money,
and his wife asked about the letter.  But George had hastily come to
a decision.  If the tale told by the woman were true, he had got a
great deal of information for nothing, and he saw no reason for
sharing whatever the letter might contain with those most likely to
profit by it.  As to letting the Cheap Jack have any thing whatever
to do with the disposal of his savings, nothing could be further
from his intentions.

"Gearge bean't such a vool as a looks," thought that worthy, and
aloud he vowed, with unnecessary oaths, that the money was still in
the bank, and that he had forgotten to bring the letter, which was
in a bundle that he had left at the mill.

This disappointment did not, however, diminish the civility of the
Cheap Jack's wife.  She was very hospitable, and even pressed George
to spend the night at their house, which he declined.  He had a
dread of the Cheap Jack, which was almost superstitious.

For her civility, indeed, the Cheap Jack's wife was taken to task by
her husband in a few moments when they were alone together.

"I thought you was sharper than to be took in by him!" said the
hunchback, indignantly.  "Do you believe all that gag about the bank
and the bundle? and you, as soft to him, telling him every blessed
thing, and he stowed the cash and the letter somewheres where we
shall never catch a sight of 'em, and got every thing out of you as
easy as shelling a pod of peas."  And in language as strong as that
of the miller's man the Cheap Jack swore he could have done better
himself a hundred times over.

"Could you?" said the large-mouthed woman, contemptuously.  "I
wouldn't live long in the country, I wouldn't, if it was to make me
such a owl as you've turned into.  It ain't much farther than your
nose YOU sees!"

"Never mind me, Sal, my dear," said the hunchback, anxiously.  "I
trusts you, my dear.  And it seems to me as if you thought he'd got
'em about him.  Do you, my dear, and why?  And why did you tell him
the truth, straight on end, when a made-up tale would have done as
well, and kept him in the dark?"

"Why did I tell him the truth?" repeated the woman.  "'Cos I ain't
such a countrified fool as to think lies is allus the cleverest tip,
'cos the truth went farthest this time.  Why do I think he's got 'em
about him?  First, 'cos he swore so steady he hadn't.  For a ready
lie, and for acting a lie, and over-acting it at times, give me
townspeople; but for a thundering big un, against all reason, and
for sticking to it stupid when they're downright convicted, and with
a face as innercent as a baby's, give me a country lump.  And next,
because I can tell with folks a deal sharper than him, even to which
side of 'em the pocket is they've got what they wants to hide in, by
the way they moves their head and their hands."

"Which side is it of him, Sal?" said the hunchback, with ugly
eagerness.

"The left," said Sal; "but it won't be there long."



CHAPTER XVII.

THE MILLER'S MAN AT THE MOP.--A LIVELY COMPANION.--SAL LOSES HER
PURSE.--THE RECRUITING SERGEANT.--THE POCKET-BOOK TWICE STOLEN.--
GEORGE IN THE KING'S ARMS.--GEORGE IN THE KING'S SERVICE.--THE
LETTER CHANGES HANDS, BUT KEEPS ITS SECRET.

For some years the ex-servant of the windmill had been rather
favored by fortune than otherwise.  He found the pocket-book, and,
though he could not read the letter, he got the five-pound note.
Since then, his gains, honest and dishonest, had been much beyond
his needs, and his savings were not small.  Suspicion was just
beginning to connect his name and that of the Cheap Jack with
certain thefts committed in the neighborhood, when he made up his
mind to go.

His wealth was not generally known.  Many a time had he been tempted
to buy pigs (a common speculation in the district, and the first
stone of more than one rustic fortune), but the dread of exciting
suspicion balanced the almost certain profit, and he could never
make up his mind.  For Master Lake paid only five pounds a year for
his man's valuable services, which, even in a district where at that
time habits were simple, and boots not made of brown paper, did not
leave much margin for the purchase of pigs.  The pig speculation,
though profitable, was not safe.  George had made money, however,
and he had escaped detection.  On the whole, he had been fortunate.
But that mop saw a turn in the tide of his affairs, and ended
strangely with him.

It began otherwise.  George had never felt more convinced of his
power to help himself at the expense of his neighbors than he did
after getting Sal's information, and keeping back his own, before
they started to join in the amusements of the fair.  He was on good
terms with himself; none the less so that he had not failed to see
the Cheap Jack's chagrin, as the woman poured forth all she knew for
George's benefit, and got nothing in return.

The vanity of the ignorant knows no check except from without; under
flattery, it is boundless, and the Cheap Jack's wife found no
difficulty in fooling George to the top of his bent.

George was rather proud, too, of his companion.  She was not, as has
been said, ill-looking but for her mouth, and beauty was not
abundant enough in the neighborhood to place her at much
disadvantage.  Fashionable finery was even less common, and the
Cheap Jack's wife was showily dressed.  And George found her a very
pleasant companion; much livelier than the slow-witted damsels of
the country-side.  For him she had nothing but flattery; but her
smart speeches at the expense of other people in the crowd caused
the miller's man to double up his long back with laughter.

A large proportion of the country wives and sweethearts tramped up
and down the fair at the heels of their husbands and swains, like
squaws after their Indian spouses.  But the Cheap Jack's wife asked
George for his arm,--the left one,--and she clung to it all the day.
"Quite the lady in her manners she be," thought George.  She called
him "Mr. Sannel," too.  George felt that she admired him.  For a
moment his satisfaction was checked, when she called his attention
to the good looks of a handsome recruiting sergeant, who was
strutting about the mop with an air expressing not so much that it
all belonged to him as that he didn't at all belong to it.

"But there, he ain't to hold a candle to you, Mr. Sannel, though his
coat do sit well upon him," said the Cheap Jack's wife.

It gratified George's standing ill-will to the Cheap Jack to have
"cut him out" with this showy lady, and to laugh loudly with her
upon his arm, whilst the hunchback followed, like a discontented
cur, at their heels.  If there was a drawback to the merits of his
lively companion, it was her power of charming the money out of
George's pocket.

The money that he disbursed came from the right-hand pocket of his
red waistcoat.  In the left-hand pocket (and the pockets, like the
pattern of the waistcoat, were large) was the lost pocket-book.  It
was a small one, and just fitted in nicely.  In the pocket-book were
George's savings, chiefly in paper.  Notes were more portable than
coin, and, as George meant to invest them somewhere where he was not
known, no suspicions need be raised by their value.  The letter was
there also.

There were plenty of shows at the mop, and the Cheap Jack's wife saw
them all.  The travelling wax-works; the menagerie with a very mangy
lion in an appallingly rickety cage; the fat Scotchman, a monster
made more horrible to view by a dress of royal Stuart tartan; the
penny theatre, and a mermaid in a pickling-tub.

One treat only she declined.  The miller's man would have paid for a
shilling portrait of her, but she refused to be taken.

The afternoon was wearing away, when Sal caught sight of some
country bumpkins upon a stage, who were preparing to grin through
horse-collars against each other for the prize of a hat.  As she had
never seen or heard of the entertainment, George explained it to
her.

It was a contest in which the ugliest won the prize.  Only the
widest-mouthed, most grotesque-looking clowns of the place attempted
to compete; and he won who, besides being the ugliest by nature,
could "grin" and contort his features in the mode which most tickled
the fancy of the beholders.  George had once competed himself, and
had only failed to secure the hat because his nearest rival could
squint as well as grin; and he was on the point of boasting of this,
but on second thoughts he kept the fact to himself.

Very willing indeed he was to escort his companion to a show in the
open air for which nothing was charged, and they plunged valiantly
into the crowd.  The crowd was huge, but George's height and
strength stood him in good stead, and he pushed on, and dragged Sal
with him.  There was some confusion on the stage.  A nigger, with a
countenance which of itself moved the populace to roars of laughter,
had applied to be allowed to compete.  Opinions were divided as to
whether it would be fair to native talent, whilst there was a strong
desire to see a face that in its natural condition was "as good as a
play," with the additional attractions of a horse-collar and a grin.

The country clowns on the stage fumed, and the nigger grinned and
bowed, and the crowd yelled, and surged, and swayed, and weak people
got trampled, and everybody was tightly squeezed, and the Cheap
Jack's wife was alarmed, and withdrew her hand from George's arm,
and begged him to hold her up, which he gallantly did, she meanwhile
clinging with both hands to his smock.

As to the hunchback, it is hardly necessary to say that he did not
get very far into the crowd, and when his wife and George returned,
laughing gayly, they found him standing outside, with a sulky face.
"Look here, missus," said he; "you're a enjoying of yourself, but
I'm not.  You've got the blunt, so just hand over a few coppers, and
I'll get a pint at the King's Arms."

Sal began fumbling to find her pocket, but when she found it, she
gave a shriek, and turned it inside out.  It was empty!

If the miller's man had enjoyed himself before, he was not to be
envied now.  The Cheap Jack's wife poured forth her woes in a
continuous stream of complaint.  She minutely described the purse
which she had lost, the age and quality of her dress, and the
impossibility of there being a hole in her pocket.  She took
George's arm once more, and insisted upon revisiting every stall and
show where they had been, to see if her purse had been found.  Up
and down George toiled with her, wiping his face and feeling that he
looked like a fool, as at each place in turn they were told that
they might as well "look for a needle in a bottle of hay," and that
pickpockets were as plenty at a mop as blackberries in September.

He was tired of the woman now she was troublesome, and fidgetingly
persevering, as women are apt to be, and he was vexed to feel how
little money was left in his right-hand pocket.  He did not think of
feeling in the left one, not merely because the Cheap Jack was
standing in front of him, but because no fear for the safety of its
contents had dawned upon him.  It was easy for a woman to lose her
purse out of a pocket flapping loosely in the drapery of her skirts,
but that any thing stowed tightly away in a man's waistcoat under
his smock could be stolen in broad daylight without his knowledge
did not occur to him.  As little did he guess that of all the
pickpockets who were supposed to drive a brisk trade at the fair,
the quickest, the cleverest, the most practised professional was the
Cheap Jack's wife.

She had feigned to see "something" on the ground near an oyster
stall, which she said "might be" her purse.  As indeed it might as
well as any thing else, seeing that the said purse had no existence.

As she left them, George turned to the Cheap Jack.  "Look 'ee here,
Jack," said he; "take thee missus whoam.  She do seem to be so put
about, 'tis no manner of use her stopping in the mop.  And I be off
for a pint of something to wash my throat out.  I be mortal dry with
running up and down after she.  Women does make such a caddle about
things."

"You might stand a pint for an old friend, George, my dear," said
the Cheap Jack, following him.  But George hurried on, and shook his
head.  "No, no," said he; "tak' thee missus whoam, I tell 'ee.
She've not seen much at your expense today, if she have lost her
pus."

With which the miller's man escaped into the King's Arms, and pushed
his way to the farthest end of the room, where a large party of men
were drinking and smoking.

At a table near him sat the recruiting sergeant whom he had noticed
before, and he now examined him more closely.

He was of a not uncommon type of non-commissioned officers in the
English service.  Not of a very intellectual--hardly perhaps of an
interesting--kind of good looks, he was yet a strikingly handsome
man.  His features were good and clearly cut; his hair and moustache
were dark, thick, short and glossy; his dark eyes were quick and
bright; his figure was well-made, and better developed; his shapely
hands were not only clean, they were fastidiously trimmed about the
nails (a daintiness common below the rank of sergeant, especially
among men acting as clerks); and if the stone in his signet ring was
not a real onyx, it looked quite as well at a distance, and the
absence of a crest was not conspicuous.  He spoke with a very good
imitation of the accent of the officers he had served with, and in
his alertness, his well-trained movements, his upright carriage, and
his personal cleanliness, he came so near to looking like a
gentleman that he escaped it only by a certain swagger, which proved
an ill-chosen substitute for well-bred ease.

To George's eyes this was not visible as a fault.  The sergeant was
as much "the swell" as George could imagine any man to be.

George Sannel could never remember with distinctness the ensuing
events of that afternoon.  Dim memories remained with him of the
sergeant meeting his long stare with some civilities, to which he
was conscious of having replied less suitably than he might have
wished.  At one period, certainly, bets were made upon the height of
himself and the handsome soldier, respectively, and he was sure that
they were put back to back, and that he proved the taller man; and
that it was somehow impressed upon him that he did not look so,
because the other carried himself so much better.  It was also
impressed upon him, somehow, that if he would consent to be well-
dressed, well-fed, and well-lodged, at the expense of the country,
his own appearance would quickly rival that of the sergeant, and
that the reigning Sovereign would gladly pay, as well as keep and
clothe, such an ornamental bulwark of the state.  At some other
period the sergeant had undoubtedly told him to "give it a name,"
and the name he gave it was sixpenny ale, which he drank at the
sergeant's expense, and which was followed by shandy-gaff, on the
same footing.

At what time and for what reason George put his hand into his left-
hand waistcoat pocket he never could remember.  But when he did so,
and found it empty, the cry he raised had such a ring of anguish as
might have awakened pity for him, even where his ill deeds were
fully known.

The position was perplexing, if he had had a sober head to consider
it with.  That pickpockets abounded had been well impressed upon his
slow intellect, and that there was no means of tracing property so
lost, in the crowd and confusion of the mop.  True, his property was
worth "crying," worth offering a reward for.  But the pocket-book
was not his, and the letter was not addressed to him; and it was
doubtful if he even dare run the risk of claiming them.

His first despair was succeeded by a sort of drunken fury, in which
he accused the men sitting with him of robbing him, and then swore
it was the Cheap Jack, and so raved till the landlord of the King's
Arms expelled him as "drunk and disorderly," and most of the company
refused to believe that he had had any such sum of money to lose.

Exactly how or where, after this, the sergeant found him, George
could not remember, but his general impression of the sergeant's
kindness was strong.  He could recall that he pumped upon his head
in the yard of the King's Arms, to sober him, by George's own
request; and that it did somewhat clear his brain, his remembrance
of seeing the sergeant wipe his fingers on a cambric handkerchief
seems to prove.  They then paced up and down together arm in arm, if
not as accurately in step as might have been agreeable to the
soldier.  George remembered hearing of prize money, to which his own
loss was a bagatelle, and gathering on the whole that the army, as a
profession, opened a sort of boundless career of opportunities to a
man of his peculiar talents and appearance.  There was something
infectious, too, in the gay easy style in which the soldier seemed
to treat fortune, good or ill; and the miller's man was stimulated
at last to vow that he was not such a fool as he looked, and would
"never say die."  To the best of his belief, the sergeant replied in
terms which showed that, had he been "in cash," George's loss would
have been made good by him, out of pure generosity, and on the spot.

As it was, he pressed upon his acceptance the sum of one shilling,
which the miller's man pocketed with tears.

What recruit can afterwards remember which argument of the skilful
sergeant did most to melt his discretion into valor?

The sun had not dried the dew from the wolds, and the sails of the
windmill hung idle in the morning air, when George Sannel made his
first march to the drums and fifes, with ribbons flying from his
hat, a recruit of the 206th (Royal Wiltshire) Regiment of Foot.


As the Cheap Jack and his wife hastened home from the mop, Sal had
some difficulty in restraining her husband's impatience to examine
the pocket-book as they walked along.

Prudence prevailed, however, and it was not opened till they were at
home and alone.

In notes and money, George's savings amounted to more than thirteen
pounds.

"Pretty well, my dear," said the Cheap Jack, grinning hideously.
"And now for the letter.  Read it aloud, Sal, my dear; you're a
better scholar than me."

Sal opened the thin, well-worn sheet, and read the word "Moerdyk,"
but then she paused.  And, like Abel, she paused so long that the
hunchback pressed impatiently to look over her shoulder.

But the letter was written in a foreign language, and the Cheap Jack
and his wife were no wiser for it than the miller's man.



CHAPTER XVIII.

MIDSUMMER HOLIDAYS.--CHILD FANCIES.--JAN AND THE PIG-MINDER.--MASTER
SALTER AT HOME.--JAN HIRES HIMSELF OUT.

Midsummer came, and the Dame's school broke up for the holidays.
Jan had longed for them intensely.  Not that he was oppressed by the
labors of learning, but that he wanted to be out of doors.  Many a
little one was equally eager for the freedom of the fields, but the
common child-love for hedges and ditches, and flower-picking, and
the like, was intensified in Jan by a deeper pleasure which country
scenes awoke from the artist nature within him.  That it is no empty
sentimentality to speak of an artist nature in a child, let the
child-memories of all artists bear witness!  That they inspired the
poet Wordsworth with one of his best poems, and that they have dyed
the canvas of most landscape painters with the indestructible local
coloring of the scenes of each man's childhood, will hardly be
denied.

That this is against the wishes and the theories of many excellent
people has nothing to do with its truth.  If all children were the
bluff, hearty, charmingly naughty, enviably happy, utterly simple
and unsentimental beings that some of us wish, and so assert them to
be, it might be better for them, or it might not--who can say?  That
the healthy, careless, rough and ready type is the one to encourage,
many will agree, who cannot agree that it is universal, or even much
the most common.  It is probably from an imperfect remembrance of
their nursery lives that some people believe that the griefs of
one's childhood are light, its joys uncomplicated, and its tastes
simple.  A clearer recollection of the favorite poetry and the most
cherished day-dreams of very early years would probably convince
them that the strongest taste for tragedy comes before one's teens,
and inclines to the melodramatic; that sentimentality (of some kind)
is grateful to the verge of mawkishness; and that simple tastes are
rather a result of culture and experience than natural gifts of
infancy.

But in this rummaging up of the crude tastes, the hot little
opinions, the romance, the countless visions, the many affectations
of nursery days, there will be recalled also a very real love of
nature; varying, of course, in its intensity from a mere love of
fresh air and free romping, and a destructive taste for nosegays, to
a living romance about the daily walks of the imaginative child,--a
world apart, peopled with invisible company, such as fairies, and
those fancy friends which some children devise for themselves, or
with the beasts and flowers, to which love has given a personality.

To the romance child-fancy weaves for itself about the meadows where
the milkmaids stand thick and pale, and those green courts where
lords and ladies live, Jan added that world of pleasure open to
those gifted with a keen sense of form and color.  Strange gleams
under a stormy sky, sunshine on some kingfisher's plumage rising
from the river, and all the ever-changing beauties about him,
stirred his heart with emotions that he could not have defined.

There was much to see even from Dame Datchett's open door, but there
was more to be imagined.  Jan's envy of the pig-minder had reached a
great height when the last school-day came.

He wanted to be free by the time that the pig-herd brought his pigs
to water, and his wishes were fulfilled.  The Dame's flock and the
flock of the swineherd burst at one and the same moment into the
water-meadows, and Jan was soon in conversation with the latter.

"Thee likes pig-minding, I reckon?" said Jan, stripping the leaves
from a sallywithy wand, which he had picked to imitate that of the
swineherd.

"Do I?" said the large-coated urchin, wiping his face with the big
sleeve of his blue coat.  "That's aal thee knows about un.  I be
going to leave to-morrow, I be.  And if so be Master Salter's got
another bwoy, or if so be he's not, I dunno, it ain't nothin' to I."

Jan learned that he had eighteen pence a week for driving the pigs
to a wood at some little distance, where they fed on acorns, beech-
mast, etc.; for giving them water, keeping them together, and
bringing them home at teatime.  He allowed that he could drive them
as slowly as he pleased, and that they kept pretty well together in
the wood; but that, as a whole, the perversity of pigs was such
that-- "Well, wait till ee tries it theeself, Jan Lake, that's aal."

Jan had resolved to do so.  He did not return with his foster-
brothers to the mill.  He slipped off on one of his solitary
expeditions, and made his way to the farm-house of Master Salter.

Master Salter and his wife sat at tea in the kitchen.  In the
cheerful clatter of cups, they had failed to hear Jan's knock; but
the sunshine streaming through the open doorway being broken by some
small body, the farmer's wife looked hastily up, thinking that the
new-born calf had got loose, and was on the threshold.

But it was Jan.  The outer curls of his hair gleamed in the sunlight
like an aureole about his face.  He had doffed his hat, out of
civility, and he held it in one hand, whilst with the other he
fingered the slate that hung at his waist.

"Massey upon us!" said the farmer, looking up at the same instant.
"And who be thee?"

"Jan Lake, the miller's son, maester."

"Come in, come in!" cried Master Salter, hospitably.  "So Master
Lake have sent thee with a message, eh?"

"My father didn't send me," said Jan, gravely.  "I come myself.  Do
'ee want a pig-minder, Master Salter?"

"Ay, I wants a pig-minder.  But I reckon thee father can't spare
Abel for that now.  A wish he could.  Abel was careful with the
pigs, he was, and a sprack boy, too."

"I'll be careful, main careful, Master Salter," said Jan, earnestly.
"I likes pigs."  But the farmer was pondering.

"Jan Lake--Jan," said he.  "Be thee the boy as draad out the sow and
her pigs for Master Chuter's little gel?"  Jan nodded.

"Lor massey!" cried Master Salter.  "I' told'ee, missus, about un.
Look here, Jan Lake.  If thee'll draa me out some pigs like them,
I'll give 'ee sixpence and a new slate, and I'll try thee for a
week, anyhow."

Jan drew the slate-pencil from his pocket without reply.  Mrs.
Salter, who had been watching him with motherly eyes, pushed a small
stool towards him, and he began to draw a scene such as he had been
studying daily for months past,--pigs at the water-side.  He had
made dozens of such sketches.  But the delight of the farmer knew no
bounds.  He slapped his knees, he laughed till the tears ran down
his cheeks, and, as Jan put a very wicked eye into the face of the
hindmost pig, he laughed merrily also.  He was not insensible of his
own talents, and the stimulus of the farmer's approbation gave vigor
to his strokes.

"Here, missus," cried Master Salter; "get down our Etherd's new
slate, and give it to un; I'll get another for he.  And there's the
sixpence, Jan; and if thee minds pigs as well as 'ee draas 'em, I
don't care how long 'ee minds mine."

The object of his visit being now accomplished, Jan took up his hat
to depart, but an important omission struck him, and he turned to
say, "What'll 'ee give me for minding your pigs, Master Salter?"

Master Salter was economical, and Jan was small, and anxious for the
place.

"A shilling a week," said the farmer.

"And his tea?" the missus gently suggested.

"Well, I don't mind," said Master Salter.  "A shilling a week and
thee tea."

Jan paused.  His predecessor had had eighteen pence for very
imperfect services.  Jan meant to be beyond reproach, and felt
himself worth quite as much.

"I give the other boy one and sixpence," said the farmer, "but
thee's very small."

"I'm sprack," said Jan, confidently.  "And I be fond of pigs."

"Massey upon me," said Master Salter, laughing again.  "Tis a peart
young toad, sartinly.  A might be fifty year old, for the ways of
un.  Well, thee shall have a shilling and thee tea, or one and
sixpence without, then."  And seeing that Jan glanced involuntarily
at the table, the farmer added, "Give un some now, missus.  I'll lay
a pound bill the child be hungry."

Jan was hungry.  He had bartered the food from his "nunchin bag" at
dinner-time for another child's new slate-pencil.  The cakes were
very good, too, and Mrs. Salter was liberal.  He rose greatly in her
esteem by saying grace before meat.  He cooled his tea in his saucer
too, and raised it to his lips with his little finger stuck stiffly
out (a mark of gentility imparted by Mrs. Lake), and in all points
conducted himself with the utmost propriety.  "For what we have
received the Lord be praised," was his form of giving thanks; to
which Mrs. Salter added, "Amen," and "Bless his heart!"  And Jan,
picking up his hat, lifted his dark eyes candidly to the farmer's
face, and said with much gravity and decision, -

"I'll take a shilling a week and me tea, Master Salter, if it be all
the same to you.  And thank you kindly, sir, and the missus
likewise."



CHAPTER XIX.

THE BLUE COAT.--PIG-MINDING AND TREE-STUDYING.--LEAF-PAINTINGS.--A
STRANGER.--MASTER SWIFT IS DISAPPOINTED.

When Jan returned to the windmill, and gravely announced that he had
hired himself out as pig-minder to Master Salter, Mrs. Lake was, as
she said, "put about."  She considered pig-minding quite beneath the
dignity of her darling, and brought forward every objection she
could think of except the real one.  But the windmiller had no
romantic dreams on Jan's behalf, and he decided that "'twas better
he should be arning a shillin' a week than gettin' into mischief at
whoam."  Jan's ambition, however, was not satisfied.  He wanted a
blue coat, such as is worn by the shepherd-boys on the plains.  He
did not mind how old it was, but it must be large; long in the skirt
and sleeves.  He had woven such a romance about Master Salter's
swineherd and his life, as he watched him week after week from Dame
Datchett's door with envious eyes, that even his coat, with the
tails almost sweeping the ground, seemed to Jan to have a dignified
air.  And there really was something to be said in favor of sleeves
so long that he could turn them back into a huge cuff in summer, and
turn them down, Chinese fashion, over his hands in winter, to keep
them warm.

Such a blue coat Abel had possessed, but it was not suitable for
mill work, and Mrs. Lake was easily persuaded to give it to Jan.  He
refused to have it curtailed, or in any way adapted to his figure,
and in it, with a switch of his own cutting, he presented himself at
Master Salter's farm in good time the following morning.

It could not be said that Jan's predecessor had exaggerated the
perversity of the pigs he drove.  If the coat of his choice had a
fault in Jan's estimation, it was that it helped to make him very
hot as he ran hither and thither after his flock.  But he had not
studied pig-nature in vain.  He had a good deal of sympathy with its
vagaries, and he was quite able to outwit the pigs.  Indeed, a
curious attachment grew up between the little swineherd and his
flock, some of whom would come at his call, when he rewarded their
affection, as he had gained it, by scratching their backs with a
rough stick.

But there were times when their playful and errant peculiarities
were no small annoyance to him.  Jan was growing fast both in mind
and body.  Phases of taste and occupation succeed each other very
rapidly when one is young; and there are, perhaps, no more distinct
phases, more sudden strides, than in the art of painting.  With Jan
the pig phase was going, and it was followed by landscape-sketching.

Jan was drawing his pigs one day in the little wood, when he fancied
that the gnarled elbow of a branch near him had, in its outline,
some likeness to a pig's face, and he began to sketch it on his
slate.  But in studying the tree the grotesque likeness was
forgotten, and there burst upon his mind, as a revelation, the sense
of that world of beauty which lies among stems and branches, twigs
and leaves.  Painfully, but with happy pains, he traced the branch
joint by joint, curve by curve, as it spread from the parent stem
and tapered to its last delicate twigs.  It was like following a
river from its source to the sea.  But to that sea of summer sky, in
which the final ramifications of his branch were lost, Jan did not
reach.  He was abruptly stopped by the edge of his slate, which
would hold no more.

To remedy this, when next he drew trees, he began the branches from
the outer tips, and worked inwards to the stem.  It was done for
convenience, but to this habit he used afterwards to lay some of the
merit of his admirable touch in tree-painting.  And so "pig-making"
became an amusement of the past, and the spell of the woods fell on
Jan.

It was no very wonderful wood either, this one where he first herded
pigs and studied trees.  It was composed chiefly of oaks and
beeches, none of them of very grand proportions.  But it was little
cut and little trodden.  The bramble-bowers were unbroken, the leaf-
mould was deep and rich, and a very tiny stream, which trickled out
of sight, kept mosses ever green about its bed.  The whole wood was
fragrant with honeysuckle, which pushed its way everywhere, and gay
with other wild flowers.  But the trees were Jan's delight.  He
would lie on his back and gaze up into them with unwearying
pleasure.  He looked at his old etching with new interest, to see
how the artist had done the branches of the willows by the water-
mill.  And then he would get Abel to put a very sharp point to his
own slate-pencil, and would go back to the real oaks and beeches,
which were so difficult and yet so fascinating to him.

He was very happy in the wood, with two drawbacks.  The pigs would
stray when he became absorbed in his sketching, and the slate and
slate-pencil, which did very well to draw pigs in outline, were
miserable implements, when more than half the beauty of the subject
to be represented was in its color.  For the first evil there was no
remedy but to give chase.  Out of the second came an amusement in
favor of which even the beloved slate hung idle.

In watching beautiful bits of coloring in the wood, contrasted
greens of many hues, some jutting branch with yellowish foliage
caught by the sun, and relieved by a distance of blue grays beyond,-
-colors and contrasts which only grew lovelier as the heavy green of
midsummer was broken by the inroad of autumnal tints,--Jan noticed
also that among the fallen leaves at his feet there were some of
nearly every color in the foliage above.  At first it was by a sort
of idle trick that he matched one against the other, as a lady sorts
silks for her embroidery; then he arranged bits of the leaves upon
the outline on his slate, and then, the slate being too small, he
amused himself by grouping the leaves upon the path in front of him
into woodland scenes.  The idea had been partly suggested to him by
a bottle which stood on Mrs. Salter's mantelpiece, containing
colored sands arranged into landscapes; a work of art sent by Mrs.
Salter's sister from the Isle of Wight.

The slate would have been quite unused, but for the difficulties Jan
got into with his outlines.  At last he adopted the plan of making a
sketch upon his slate, which he then laid beside him on the walk,
and copied it in leaves.  More perishable even than the pig-
drawings, the evening breeze generally cast these paintings to the
winds, but none the less was Jan happy with them, and sometimes in
quiet weather, or a sheltered nook, they remained undisturbed for
days.

Dame Datchett's school reopened, but Jan would not leave his pigs.
He took the shilling faithfully home each week to his foster-mother.
She found it very useful, and she had no very high ideas about
education.  She had some twinges of conscience in the matter, but
she had no strength of purpose, and Jan went his own way.

The tints had grown very warm on trees and leaves, when Jan one day
accomplished, with much labor, the best painting he had yet done.
It was of a scene before his eyes.  The trees were admirably
grouped; he put little bits of twigs for the branches, which now
showed more than hitherto, and he added a glimpse of the sky by
neatly dovetailing the petals of some bluebells into a mosaic.  He
had turned back the long sleeves of his coat, and had with
difficulty kept the tail of it from doing damage to his foreground,
and had perseveringly kept the pigs at bay, when, as he returned
with a last instalment of bluebells to finish his sky, he saw a man
standing on the path, with his back to him, completely blotting out
the view by his very broad body, and with one heel not half an inch
from Jan's picture.

He was a coarsely built old man, dressed in threadbare black.  The
tones of his voice were broad, and quite unlike the local dialect.
He was speaking as Jan came up, but to no companion that Jan could
see, though his hand was outstretched in sympathy with his words.
He was looking upwards, too, as Jan was wont to look himself, into
that azure sky which he was trying to paint in bluebell flowers.

In truth, the stranger was spouting poetry, and poems and
recitations were alike unknown to Jan; but something caught his
fancy in what he heard, and the flowers dropped from his fingers as
the broad but not ungraceful accents broke upon his ear:  -

     "The clouds were pure and white as flocks new shorn,
      And fresh from the clear brook; sweetly they slept
      On the blue fields of heaven, and then there crept
      A little noiseless noise among the leaves,
      Born of the very sigh that silence heaves;
      For not the faintest motion could be seen
      Of all the shades that slanted o'er the green."

The old man paused for an instant, and, turning round, saw Jan, and
put his heavy foot into the sky of Jan's picture.  He drew it back
at Jan's involuntary cry, and, after a long look at the quaint
figure before him, said, "Are ye one of the fairies, little man?"

But Jan knew nothing of fairies.  "I be Jan Lake, from the mill,"
said he.

"Are ye so?  But that's not a miller's coat ye've on," said the old
man, with a twinkle in his eye.

Jan looked seriously at it, and then explained.  "I be Master
Salter's pig-minder just now, but I've got a miller's thumb, I
have."

"That's well, Master Pig-minder; and now would ye tell an old man
what ye screamed out for.  Did I scare ye?"

"Oh, no, sir," said Jan, civilly; and he added, "I liked that you
were saying."

"Are ye a bit of a poet as well as a pig-minder, then?" and waving
his hand with a theatrical gesture up the wood, the old man began to
spout afresh:  -

     "A filbert hedge with wild briar overtwined,
      And clumps of woodbine taking the soft wind
      Upon their summer thrones; there too should be
      The frequent chequer of a youngling tree,
      That with a score of light green brethren shoots
      From the quaint mossiness of aged roots:
      Round which is heard a spring-head of clear waters
      Babbling so wildly of its lovely daughters,
      The spreading bluebells; it may haply mourn
      That such fair clusters should be rudely torn
      From their fresh beds, and scattered thoughtlessly
      By infant hands, left on the path to die."

Between the strange dialect and the unfamiliar terseness of poetry,
Jan did not follow this very clearly, but he caught the allusion to
bluebells, and the old man brought his hand back to his side with a
gesture so expressive towards the bluebell fragments at his feet,
that it hardly needed the tone of reproach he gave to the last few
words--"left on the path to die"--to make Jan hang his head.

"'Twas the only blue I could find," he said, looking ruefully at the
fading flowers.

"And what for did ye want blue, then, my lad?"

"To make the sky with," said Jan.

"The powers of the air be good to us!" said the stranger, setting
his broad hat back from his face, as if to obtain a clearer view of
the little pig-minder.  "Are ye a sky-maker as well as a swineherd?
And while I'm catechising ye, may I ask for what do ye bring a slate
out pig-minding and sky-making?"

"I draws out the trees on it first," said Jan, "and then I does them
in leaves.  If you'll come round," he added, shyly, "you'll see it.
But don't tread on un, please, sir."

The old man fumbled in his pocket, from which he drew a shagreen
spectacle-case, as substantial looking as himself, and, planting the
spectacles firmly on his heavy nose, he held out his hand to Jan.

"There," said he, "take me where ye will.  To bonnie Elf-land, if
that's your road, where withered leaves are gold."

Jan ran round willingly to take the hand of his new friend.  He felt
a strange attraction towards him.  His speech was puzzling and had a
tone of mockery, but his face was unmistakably kind.

"Now then, lad, which path do we go by?" said he.

"There's only one," said Jan, gazing up at the old man, as if by
very staring with his black eyes he could come to understand him.
But in an instant he was spouting again, holding Jan before him with
one hand, whilst he used the other as a sort of baton to his speech:
-

     "And know'st thou not yon broad, broad road
      That lies across the lily levin?
      That is the path of sinfulness,
      Though some think it the way to heaven."

"Go on, please!" Jan cried, as the old man paused.  His rugged
speech seemed plainer in the lines it suited so well, and a touch of
enthusiasm in his voice increased the charm.

     "And know'st thou not that narrow path
      So thick beset with thorns and briars?
      It is the path of righteousness,
      And after it but few aspires.

     "And know'st thou not the little path
      That winds about the ferny brae?
      That is the road to bonnie Elf-land,
      Where thou and I this night maun gae."

"Where is it?" said Jan, earnestly.  "Is't a town?"

The old man laughed.  "I'm thinking it would be well to let that
path be, in your company.  We'd hardly get out under a year and a
day."

"I'd go--with you," said Jan, confidently.  Many an expedition had
he undertaken on his own responsibility, and why not this?

"First, show me what ye were going to show me," said the old man.
"Where's this sky you've been manufacturing?"

"It's on the ground, sir."

"On the ground!  And are ye for turning earth into heaven among your
other trades?"  What this might mean Jan knew not; but he led his
friend round, and pointed out the features of his leaf-picture.  He
hoped for praise, but the old man was silent,--long silent, though
he seemed to be looking at what Jan showed him.  And when he did
speak, his broken words were addressed to no one.

"Wonderful! wonderful!  The poetry of 't.  It's no child's play,
this.  It's genius.  Ay! we mun see to it!"  And then, with clasped
hands, he cried, "Good Lord!  Have I found him at last?"

"Have you lost something?" said Jan.

But the old man did not answer.  He did not even speak of the leaf-
picture, to Jan's chagrin.  But, stroking the boy's shoulder almost
tenderly, he asked, "Did ye ever go to school, laddie?"

Jan nodded.  "At Dame Datchett's," said he.

"Ah! ye were sorry to leave school for pig-minding, weren't ye?"

Jan shook his head.  "I likes pigs," said he.  "I axed Master Salter
to let me mind his.  I gets a shilling a week and me tea."

"But ye like school better?  Ye love your books, don't ye?"

Jan shook his head again.  "I don't like school," said he, "I likes
being in the wood."

The old man winced as if some one had struck him in the face, then
he muttered, "The wood!  Ay, to be sure!  And such a school, too!"

Then he suddenly addressed Jan.  "Do ye know me, my lad?"

"No, sir," said Jan.

"Swift--Master Swift, they call me.  You've heard tell of Master
Swift, the schoolmaster?"

Jan shrank back.  He had heard of Master Swift as a man whose stick
was more to be dreaded than Dame Datchett's strap, and of his school
as a place where liberty was less than with the Dame.

"See thee!" said the old man, speaking broader and broader in his
earnestness.  "If thy father would send thee,--nay, what am I
saying?--if I took thee for naught and gladly, thou'dst sooner come
to the old schoolmaster and his books than stay with pigs, even in a
wood?  Eh, laddie?  Will ye come to school?"

But the tradition of Master Swift's severity was strong in Jan's
mind, and the wood was pleasant to him, and he only shrank back
farther, and said, "No."  Children often give pain to their elders,
of the intensity of which they have no measure; but, had Jan been
older and wiser than he was, he might have been puzzled by the
bitterness of the disappointment written on Master Swift's
countenance.

An involuntary impulse made the old man break the blow by doing
something.  With trembling fingers he folded his spectacles, and
crammed them into the shagreen case.  But, when that was done, he
still found nothing to say, and he turned his back and went away in
silence.

In silence Jan watched him, half regretfully, and strained his ears
to catch something that Master Swift began again to recite:  -

                "Things sort not to my will,
      Even when my will doth study Thy renown:
      Thou turn'st the edge of all things on me still,
      Taking me up to throw me down."

Then, lifting a heavy bramble that had fallen across his path, the
schoolmaster stooped under it, and passed from sight.

And a sudden gust of wind coming sharply down the way by which he
went caught the fragments of Jan's picture, and whirled them
broadcast through the wood.



CHAPTER XX.

SQUIRE AMMABY AND HIS DAUGHTER.--THE CHEAP JACK DOES BUSINESS ONCE
MORE.--THE WHITE HORSE CHANGES MASTERS.

Squire Ammaby was the most good-natured of men.  He was very fond of
his wife, though she was somewhat peevish, with weak health and
nerves, and though she seemed daily less able to bear the rough and
ready attentions of her husband, and to rely more and more on the
advice and assistance of her mother, Lady Craikshaw.  From this it
came about that the Squire's affection for his wife took the shape
of wishing Lady Louisa to have every thing that she wished for, and
that the very joy of his heart was his little daughter Amabel.

Amabel was between three and four years old, and to some extent a
prodigy.  She was as tall as an average child of six or seven, and
stout in proportion.  The size of her shoes scandalized her
grandmother, and once drew tears from Lady Louisa as she reflected
on the probable size of Miss Ammaby's feet by the time she was
"presented."

Lady Louisa was tall and weedy; the Squire was tall and robust.
Amabel inherited height on both sides, but in face and in character
she was more like her father than her mother.  Indeed, Lady Louisa
would close her eyes, and Lady Craikshaw would put up her gold glass
at the child, and they would both cry, "Sadly coarse!  QUITE AN
AMMABY!"  Amabel was not coarse, however; but she had a strength and
originality of character that must have come from some bygone
generation, if it was inherited.  She had a pitying affection for
her mother.  With her grandmother she lived at daggers drawn.  She
kept up a pretty successful struggle for her own way in the nursery.
She was devoted to her father, when she could get at him, and she
poured an almost boundless wealth of affection on every animal that
came in her way.

An uncle had just given her a Spanish saddle, and her father had
promised to buy her a donkey.  He had heard of one, and was going to
drive to the town to see the owner.  With great difficulty Amabel
had got permission from her mother and grandmother to go with the
Squire in the pony carriage.  As she had faithfully promised to "be
good," she submitted to be "well wrapped up," under her
grandmother's direction, and staggered downstairs in coat, cape,
gaiters, comforter, muffatees, and with a Shetland veil over her
burning cheeks.  She even displayed a needless zeal by carrying a
big shawl in a lump in her arms, which she would give up to no one.

"No, no!" she cried, as the Squire tried to take it from her.  "Lift
me in, daddy, lift me in!"

The Squire laughed, and obeyed her, saying, "Why, bless my soul,
Amabel, I think you grow heavier every day."

Amabel came up crimson from some disposal of the shawl after her own
ideas, and her eyes twinkled as he spoke, though her fat cheeks kept
their gravity.  It was not till they were far on their way that a
voice from below the seat cried, "Yap!"

"Why, there's one of the dogs in the carriage," said the Squire.

On which, clinging to one of his arms and caressing him, Amabel
confessed, "It's only the pug, dear daddy.  I brought him in under
the shawl.  I did so want him to have a treat too.  And grandmamma
is so hard!  She hardly thinks I ought to have treats, and she NEVER
thinks of treats for the dogs."

The Squire only laughed, and said she must take care of the dog when
they got to the town; and Amabel was encouraged to ask if she might
take off the Shetland veil.  Hesitating between his fear of Amabel's
catching cold, and a common-sense conviction that it was ludicrous
to dress her according to her invalid mother's susceptibilities, the
Squire was relieved from the responsibility of deciding by Amabel's
promptly exposing her rosy cheeks to the breeze, and they drove on
happily to the town.  The Squire had business with the Justices, and
Amabel was left at the Crown.  When he came back, Amabel jumped down
from the window and the black blind over which she was peeping into
the yard, and ran up to her father with tears on her face.

"Oh, daddy!" she cried, "dear, good daddy!  I don't want you to buy
me a donkey, I want you to buy me a horse."

"That's modest!" said the Squire; "but what are you crying for?"

"Oh, it's such a poor horse!  Such a very old, poor horse!" cried
Amabel.  And from the window Mr. Ammaby was able to confirm her
statements.  It was the Cheap Jack's white horse, which he had been
trying to persuade the landlord to buy as a cab-horse.  More lean,
more scarred, more drooping than ever, it was a pitiful sight, now
and then raising its soft nose and intelligent eyes to the window,
as if it knew what a benevolent little being was standing on a
slippery chair, with her arms round the Squire's neck, pleading its
cause.

"But when I buy horses," said the Squire, "I buy young, good ones,
not very old and poor ones."

"Oh, but do buy it, daddy!  Perhaps it's not had enough to eat, like
that kitten I found in the ditch.  And perhaps it'll get fat, like
her; and mamma said we wanted an old horse to go in the cart for
luggage, and I'm sure that one's very old.  And that's such a horrid
man, like hump-backed Richard.  And when nobody's looking, he tugs
it, and beats it.  Oh, I wish I could beat him!" and Amabel danced
dangerously upon the horsehair seat in her white gaiters with
impotent indignation.  The Squire was very weak when pressed by his
daughter, but at horses, if at any thing, he looked with an eye to
business.  To buy such a creature would be ludicrous.  Still, Amabel
had made a strong point by what Lady Louisa had said.  No one, too,
knew better than the Squire what difference good and bad treatment
can make in a horse, and this one had been good once, as his
experienced eye told him.  He said he "would see," and strolled into
the yard.

Long practice had given the Cheap Jack a quickness in detecting a
possible purchaser which almost amounted to an extra sense, and he
at once began to assail the Squire.  But a nearer view of the white
horse had roused Mr. Ammaby's indignation.

"I wonder," he said, "that you're not ashamed to exhibit a poor
beast that's been so ill-treated.  For heaven's sake, take it to the
knacker's, and put it out of its misery at once."

"Look ye, my lord," said the Cheap Jack, touching his cap.  "The
horse have been ill-treated, I knows.  I'm an afflicted man, my
lord, and the boy I've employed, he's treated him shameful; and when
a man can't feed hisself, he can't keep his beast fat neither.
That's why I wants to get rid on him, my lord.  I can't keep him as
I should, and I'd like to see him with a gentleman like yourself
as'll do him justice.  He comes of a good stock, my lord.  Take him
for fifteen pound," he added, waddling up to the Squire, "and when
you've had him three months, you'll sell him for thirty."

This was too much.  The Squire broke out in a furious rage.

"You unblushing scoundrel!" he cried.  "D'ye think I'm a fool?
Fifteen pounds for a horse you should be fined for keeping alive!
Be off with it, and put it out of misery."  And he turned
indignantly into the inn, the Cheap Jack calling after him, "Say ten
pound, my lord!" the bystanders giggling, and the ostler whistling
dryly through the straw in his mouth, "Take it to the knacker's,
Cheap John."

"Oh, daddy dear! have you got him?" cried Amabel, as the Squire re-
entered the parlor.

"No, my dear; the poor beast isn't fit to draw carts, my darling.
It's been so badly treated, the only kindness now is to kill it, and
put it out of pain.  And I've told the hunchback so."

It was a matter of course and humanity to the Squire, but it
overwhelmed poor Amabel.  She gasped, "Kill it!" and then bursting
into a flood of tears she danced on the floor, wringing her hands
and crying, "Oh, oh, oh! don't, PLEASE, don't let him be killed!
Oh! do, do buy him and let him die comfortably in the paddock.  Oh,
do, do, do!"

"Nonsense, Amabel, you mustn't dance like that.  Remember, you
promised to be good," said the Squire.  The child gulped down her
tears, and stood quite still, with her face pale from very misery.

"I don't want not to be good," said she.  "But, oh dear, I do wish I
had some money, that I might buy that poor old horse, and let him
die comfortably at home."

It was not the money the Squire grudged; it was against all his
instincts to buy a bad horse.  But Amabel's wan face overcame him,
and he went out again.  He never lingered over disagreeable
business, and, going straight up to the Cheap Jack, he said, "My
little girl is so distressed about it, that I'll give you five
pounds for the poor brute, to stop its sufferings."

"Say eight, my lord," said the Cheap Jack.  Once more the Squire was
turning away in wrath, when he caught sight of Amabel's face at the
window.  He turned back, and, biting his lip, said, "I'll give you
five pounds if you'll take it now, and go.  If you beat me down
again, I'll offer you four.  I'll take off a pound for every bate
you utter; and, when I speak, I mean what I say.  Do you think I
don't know one horse from another?"

It is probable that the Cheap Jack would have made another effort to
better his bargain, but his wife had come to seek him, and to her
sharp eyes the Squire's resolution was beyond mistake.

"We'll take the five guineas, and thank you, sir," she said,
courtesying.  The Squire did not care to dispute the five shillings
which she had dexterously added, and he paid the sum, and the worthy
couple went away.

"Miles!" said the Squire.  The servant he had brought with him in
reference to the donkey appeared, and touched his hat.

"Miss Amabel has persuaded me to buy this poor brute, that it may
die in peace in the paddock.  Can you get it home, d'ye think?"

"I think I can, sir, this evening; after a feed and some rest."

The white horse had suddenly become a centre of interest in the inn-
yard.  Everybody, from the landlord to the stable-boy, felt its
legs, and patted it, and suggested various lines of treatment.

Before he drove away, Mr. Ammaby overheard the landlord saying, "He
be a sharp hand, is the Squire.  I shouldn't wonder if he brought
the beast round yet."  Which, for his credit's sake, the Squire
devoutly hoped he might.  But, after all, he had his reward when
Amabel, sobbing with joy, flung her arms round him, and cried, -

"Oh, you dear, darling, GOOD daddy!  How I love you and how the
white horse loves you!"



CHAPTER XXI.

MASTER SWIFT AT HOME.--RUFUS.--THE EX-PIG-MINDER.--JAN AND THE
SCHOOLMASTER.

It was a lovely autumn evening the same year, when the school having
broken up for the day, Master Swift returned to his home for tea.
He lived in a tiny cottage on the opposite side of the water-meadows
to that on which Dame Datchett dwelt, and farther down towards the
water-mill.  He had neither wife nor child, but a red dog with a
plaintive face, and the name of Rufus, kept his house when he was
absent, and kept him company when he was at home.

Rufus was a mongrel.  He was not a red setter, though his coloring
was similar.  A politely disposed person would have called him a
retriever, and his curly back and general appearance might have
carried this off, but for his tail, which, instead of being straight
and rat-like, was as plumy as the Prince of Wales's feathers, and
curled unblushingly over his back, sideways, like a pug's.  "It was
a good one to wag," his master said, and, apart from the question of
high breeding, it was handsome, and Rufus himself seemed proud of
it.

Since half-past three had Rufus sat in the porch, blinking away
positive sleep, with his pathetic face towards the road down which
Master Swift must come.  Unnecessarily pathetic, for there was every
reason for his being the most jovial of dogs, and not one for that
imposing melancholy which he wore.  His large level eyelids shaded
the pupils even when he was broad awake; an intellectual forehead,
and a very long Vandykish nose, with the curly ears, which fell like
a well-dressed peruke on each side of his face, gave him an air of
disinherited royalty.  But he was in truth a mongrel, living on the
fat of the land; who, from the day that this wistful dignity had won
the schoolmaster's heart, had never known a care, wanted a meal, or
had any thing whatever demanded of him but to sit comfortably at
home and watch with a broken-hearted countenance for the
schoolmaster's return from the labors which supported them both.
The sunshine made Rufus sleepy, but he kept valiantly watchful,
propping himself against the garden-tools which stood in the corner.
Flowers and vegetables for eating were curiously mixed in the little
garden that lay about Master Swift's cottage.  Not a corner was
wasted in it, and a thick hedge of sweet-peas formed a fragrant
fence from the outer world.

Rufus was nodding, when he heard a footstep.  He pulled himself up,
but he did not wag his tail, for the step was not the
schoolmaster's.  It was Jan's.  Rufus growled slightly, and Jan
stood outside, and called, "Master Swift!"  He and Rufus both paused
and listened, but the schoolmaster did not appear.  Then Rufus came
out and smelt Jan exhaustively, and excepting a slight flavor of
being acquainted with cats, to whom Rufus objected, he smelt well.
Rufus wagged his tail, Jan patted him, and they sat down to wait for
the master.

The clock in the old square-towered church had struck a quarter-past
four when Master Swift came down the lane, and Rufus rushed out to
meet him.  Though Rufus told him in so many barks that there was a
stranger within, and that, as he smelt respectable, he had allowed
him to wait, the schoolmaster was startled by the sight of Jan.

"Why, it's the little pig-minder!" said he.  On which Jan's face
crimsoned, and tears welled up in his black eyes.

"I bean't a pig-minder now, Master Swift," said he.

"And how's that?  Has Master Salter turned ye off?"

"I gi'ed HIM notice!" said Jan, indignantly.  "But I shan't mind
pigs no more, Master Swift"

"And why not, Master Skymaker?"

"Don't 'ee laugh, sir," said Jan.  "Master Salter he laughs.
'What's pigs for but to be killed?' says he.  But I axed him not to
kill the little black un with the white spot on his ear.  It be such
a nice pig, sir, such a very nice pig!"  And the tears flowed
copiously down Jan's cheeks, whilst Rufus looked abjectly depressed.
"It would follow me anywhere, and come when I called," Jan
continued.  "I told Master Salter it be 'most as good as a dog, to
keep the rest together.  But a says 'tis the fattest, and 'ull be
the first to kill.  And then I telled him to find another boy to
mind his pigs, for I couldn't look un in the face now, and know
'twas to be killed next month, not that one with the white spot on
his ear.  It do be such a VERY nice pig!"

Rufus licked up the tears as they fell over Jan's smock, and the
schoolmaster took Jan in and comforted him.  Jan dried his eyes at
last, and helped to prepare for tea.  The old man made some very
good coffee in a shaving-pot, and put cold bacon and bread upon the
table, and the three sat down to their meal.  Jan and his host upon
two rush-bottomed chairs, whilst Rufus scrambled into an armchair
placed for his accommodation, from whence he gazed alternately at
the schoolmaster and the victuals with sad, not to say reproachful,
eyes.

"I thought that would be your chair," said Jan.

"Well, it used to be," said Master Swift, apologetically.  "But the
poor beast can't sit well on these, and I relish my meat better with
a face on the other side of the table.  He found that too slippery
at first, till I bought yon bit of a patchwork-cushion for him at a
sale."

Rufus sighed, and Master Swift gave him a piece of bread, which,
having smelt, he allowed to lie before him on the table till his
master, laughing, rubbed the bread against the bacon, with which
additional flavor Rufus seemed content, and ate his supper.

"So you've come to the old schoolmaster, after all?" said Master
Swift:  "that's right, my lad, that's right."

"'Twas Abel sent me," said Jan; "he said I was to take to my books.
So I come because Abel axed me.  For I be main fond of Abel."

"Abel was right," said the old man.  "Take to learning, my lad.
Love your books,--friends that nobody can kill, or part ye from."

"I'd like to learn pieces like them you say," said Jan.

"So ye shall, so ye shall!" cried Master Swift.  "It's a fine thing,
is learning poetry.  It strengthens the memory, and cultivates the
higher faculties.  Take some more bacon, my lad."

Which Jan did.  At that moment he was not reflecting on his doomed
friend, the spotted pig.  Indeed, if we reflected about every thing,
this present state of existence would become intolerable.

At much length did the schoolmaster speak on the joys of learning,
and, pointing proudly to a few shelves filled by his savings, he
formally made Jan "free of" his books.  "When ye've learnt to read
them," he added.  Jan thanked him for this, and for leave to visit
him.  But he looked out of the window instead of at the book-
shelves.

Beyond Master Swift's gay flowers stretched the rich green of the
water-meads, glowing yellow in the sunlight.  The little river
hardly seemed to move in its zig-zag path, though the evening breeze
was strong enough to show the silver side of the willows that
drooped over it.  Jan wondered if he could match all these tints in
the wood, and whether Master Swift would be willing to have leaf-
pictures painted on that table in the window.  Then he found that
the old man was speaking, though he only heard the latter part of
what he said.  "--a celebrated inventor and mechanic, and that's
what you'll be, maybe.  Ay, ay, a Great Man, please the Lord; and,
when I'm laid by in the churchyard yonder, folks'll come to see the
grave of old Swift, the great man's schoolmaster.  Ye'll be an
inventor yet, lad, a benefactor to your kind, and an honor to your
country.  I'm not raising false hopes in ye, without observing your
qualities.  You've the quick eye, the slow patience, and the
inventive spark.  You can find your own tools and all, and don't
stop where other folk leaves off:  witness yon bluebells ye took to
make skies with!  But, bless the lad, he's not heeding me!  Is it
the bit of garden you're looking at?  Come out then."  And, putting
the biography back in the book-shelf, the kindly old man led Jan out
of doors.

"Say what you said in the wood again," said Jan.

But Master Swift laughed, and, stretching his hand towards the
sweet-peas hedge began at another part of the poem:  -

     "Here are sweet peas on tiptoe for a flight:
      With wings of gentle flush o'er delicate white,
      And taper fingers catching at all things
      To bind them all about with tiny rings."

Then, bending towards the river, he continued in a theatrical
whisper:  -

     "How silent comes the water round that bend!
      Not the minutest whisper does it send
      To the o'erhanging sallows" -

But here he stopped suddenly, though Jan's black eyes were at their
roundest, and his attention almost breathless.

"There, there!  I'm an old fool, and for making you as bad.
Poetry's not your business, you understand:  I'm giving ye no
encouragement to dabble with the fine arts.  Science is the ladder
for a working-man to climb to fame.  In addition to which, the poet
Keats, though he certainly speaks the very language of Nature, was a
bit of a heathen, I'm afraid, and the fascination of him might be
injurious in tender youth.  Never mind, child, if ye love poetry,
I'll learn ye pieces by the poet Herbert.  They're just true poetry,
and manly, too; and they're a fountain of experimental religion.
And, if this style is too sober for your fancy, Charles Wesley's
hymns are touched with the very fire of religious passion."

"Are your folk religious, Jan?" he added, abruptly.  And whilst Jan
stood puzzling the question, he asked with an almost official air of
authority, "Do ye any of ye come to church?"

"My father does on club-days," said Jan.

"And the rest of ye,--do ye attend any place of worship?" Jan shook
his head.

"And I'll dare to say ye didn't know I was the clerk?" said Master
Swift.  "There's paganism for ye in a Christian parish!  Well, well,
you're coming to me, lad, and, apart from your secular studies,
you'll be instructed in the Word of GOD, and in the Church Catechism
on Fridays."

"Thank you, sir," said Jan.  He felt this civility to be due, though
of the schoolmaster's plans for his benefit he had a very confused
notion.  He then took leave.  Rufus went with him to the gate, and
returned to his master with a look which plainly said, "We could
have done with him very well, if you had kept him."

When Jan had reached a bit of rising ground, from which the house he
had just left was visible, he turned round to look at it again.

Master Swift was standing where he had left him, gazing out into the
distance with painful intensity.  The fast-sinking sun lit up his
heavy face and figure with a transforming glow, and hung a golden
mist above the meads, at which he stared like one spellbound.  But
when Jan turned to pursue his way to the windmill, the schoolmaster
turned also, and went back into the cottage.



CHAPTER XXII.

THE PARISH CHURCH.--REMBRANDT.--THE SNOW SCENE.--MASTER SWIFT'S
AUTOBIOGRAPHY.

In most respects, Jan's conduct and progress were very satisfactory.
He quickly learned to read, and his copy-books were models.

The good clerk developed another talent in him.  Jan learned to
sing, and to sing very well; and he was put into the choir-seats in
the old church, where he sang with enthusiasm hymns which he had
learned by heart from the schoolmaster.

No wild weather that ever blustered over the downs could keep Jan
now from the services.  The old church came to have a fascination
for him, from the low, square tower without, round which the rooks
wheeled, to the springing pillars, the solemn gray tints of the
stone, and the round arches that so gratified the eye within.  And
did he not sit opposite to the one stained window the soldiers of
the Commonwealth had spared to the parish!  It was the only colored
picture Jan knew, and he knew every line, every tint of it, and the
separate expression on each of the wan, quaint faces of the figures.
When the sun shone, they seemed to smile at him, and their ruby
dresses glowed like garments dyed in blood.  When the colors fell
upon Abel's white head, Jan wished with all his heart that he could
have gathered them as he gathered leaves, to make pictures with.
Sometimes he day-dreamed that one of the figures came down out of
the window, and brought the colors with him, and that he and Jan
painted pictures in the other windows, filling them with gorgeous
hues, and pale, devout faces.  The fancy, empty as it was, pleased
him, and he planned how every window should be done, and told Abel,
to whom the ingenious fancy seemed as marvellous as if the work had
been accomplished.

Abel was in the choir too, not so much because of his voice as of
his great wish for it, and of the example of his good behavior.  It
was he who persuaded Mrs. Lake to come to church, and having once
begun she came often.  She tried to persuade her husband to go, and
told him how sweetly the boys' voices sounded, led by Master Swift's
fine bass, which he pitched from a key which he knocked upon his
desk.  But Master Lake had a proverb to excuse him.  "The nearer the
church, the further from GOD."  Not that he pretended to maintain
the converse of the proposition.

Jan learned plenty of poetry; hymns, which Abel learned again from
him, some of Herbert's poems, and bits of Keats.  But his favorites
were martial poems by Mrs. Hemans, which he found in an old volume
of collected verses, till the day he came upon "Marmion," and gave
himself up to Sir Walter Scott.  He spouted poetry to Abel in
imitation of Master Swift, and they enjoyed all, and understood
about half.

And yet Jan's progress was not altogether satisfactory to his
teacher.

To learn long pieces of poetry was easy pastime to him, but he was
dull or inattentive when the schoolmaster gave him some elementary
lessons in mechanics.  He wrote beautifully, but was no prodigy in
arithmetic.  He drew trees, windmills, and pigs on the desks, and
admirable portraits of the schoolmaster, Rufus, and other local
worthies, on the margins of the tables of weights and measures.

Much of his leisure was spent at Master Swift's cottage, and in
reading his books.  The schoolmaster had marked an old biographical
dictionary at pages containing lives of "self-made" men, who had
risen as inventors or improvers in mechanics or as discoverers of
important facts of natural science.  Jan had not hitherto studied
their careers with the avidity Master Swift would have liked to see,
but one day he found him reading the fat volume with deep interest.

"And whose life are ye at now, laddie?" he asked, with a smile.

Jan lifted his face, which was glowing.  "'Tis Rembrandt the painter
I be reading about.  Eh, Master Swift, he lived in a windmill, and
he was a miller's son!"

"Maybe he'd a miller's thumb," Jan added, stretching out his own,
and smiling at the droll idea.  "Do 'ee know what ETCHINGS be, then,
Master Swift?"

"A kind of picture that's scratched on a piece of copper with
needles, and costs a lot of money to print," said Master Swift,
dryly; and he turned his broad back and went out.

It was one day in the second winter of Jan's learning under Master
Swift that matters came to a climax.  The schoolmaster loved
punctuality, but Jan was not always punctual.  He was generally
better in this respect in winter than in summer, as there was less
to distract his attention on the road to school.  But one winter's
day he loitered to make a sketch on his slate, and made matters
worse by putting finishing touches to it after he was seated at the
desk.

It was not a day to suggest sketching, but, turning round when he
was about half way to the village, the view seemed to Jan to be
exactly suitable for a slate sketch.  The long slopes of the downs
were white with snow; but it was a dull grayish white, for there was
no sunshine, and the gray-white of the slate-pencil did it justice
enough.  In the middle distance rose the windmill, and a thatched
cattle shed and some palings made an admirable foreground.  On the
top and edges of these lay the snow, outlining them in white, which
again the slate-pencil could imitate effectively.  There only wanted
something darker than the slate itself to do those parts of the
foreground and the mill which looked darker than the sky, and for
this Jan trusted to pen and ink when he reached his desk.  The
drawing was very successful, and Jan was so absorbed in admiring it
that he did not notice the schoolmaster's approach, but feeling some
one behind him, he fancied it was one of the boys, and held up the
slate triumphantly, whispering, "Look 'ee here!"

It was Master Swift who looked, and snatching the slate he brought
it down on the sharp corner of the desk, and broke it to pieces.
Then he went back to his place, and spoke neither bad nor good to
Jan for the rest of the school-time.  Jan would much rather have
been beaten.  Once or twice he made essay to go up to Master Swift's
desk, but the old man's stern countenance discouraged him, and he
finally shrank into a corner and sat weeping bitterly.  He sat there
till every scholar but himself had gone, and still the schoolmaster
did not speak.  Jan slunk out, and when Master Swift turned
homewards Jan followed silently in his footsteps through the snow.
At the door of the cottage, the old man looked round with a
relenting face.

"I suppose Rufus'll insist on your coming in," said he; and Jan
rushing in hid his face in Rufus's curls, and sobbed heavily.

"Tut, tut!" said the schoolmaster.  "No more of that, child.
There's bitters enough in life, without being so prodigal of your
tears."

"Come and sit down with ye," he went on.  "You're very young, lad,
and maybe I'm foolish to be angry with ye that you're not wise.  But
yet ye've more sense than your years in some respects, and I'm
thinking I'll try and make ye see things as I see 'em.  I'm going to
tell ye something about myself, if ye'd care to hear it."

"I'd be main pleased, Master Swift," said Jan, earnestly.

"I'd none of your advantages, lad," said the old man.  "When I was
your age, I knew more mischief than you need ever know, and uncommon
little else.  I'm a self-educated man,--I used to hope I should live
to hear folk say a self-made Great Man.  It's a bitter thing to have
the ambition without the genius, to smoulder in the fire that great
men shine by!  However, it's something to have just the saving sense
to know that ye've not got it, though it's taken a wasted lifetime
to convince me, and I sometimes think the deceiving serpent is more
scotched than killed yet.  However, ye seem to me to be likelier to
lack the ambition than the genius, so we may let that bide.  But
there's a snare of mine, Jan, that I mean your feet to be free of,
and that's a mischosen vocation.  I'm not a native of these parts,
ye must know.  I come from the north, and in those mining and
manufacturing districts I've seen many a man that's got an
education, and could keep himself sober, rise to own his house and
his works, and have men under him, and bring up his children like
the gentry.  For mark ye, my lad.  In such matters the experiences
of the early part of an artisan's life are all so much to the good
for him, for they're in the working of the trade, and the finest
young gentleman has got it all to learn, if he wants to make money
in that line.  I got my education, and I was sober enough, but--
Heaven help me--I must be a poet, and in THAT line a gentleman's son
knows almost from the nursery many a thing that I had to teach
myself with hard labor as a man.  It was just a madness.  But I read
all the poetry I could lay my hands on, and I wrote as well."

"Did you write poetry, Master Swift?" said Jan.

"Ay, Jan, of a sort.  At one time I worshipped Burns.  And then I
wrote verses in the dialect of my native place, which, ye must know,
I can speak with any man when I've a mind," said Master Swift,
unconscious that he spoke it always.  "And then it was Wordsworth,
for the love of nature is just a passion with me, and it's that that
made the poet Keats a new world to me.  Well, well, now I'm telling
you how I came here.  It was after my wife.  She was lady's-maid to
Squire Ammaby's mother, and the old Squire got me the school.  Ah,
those were happy days!  I was a godless, rough sort of a fellow when
she married me, but I became a converted man.  And let me tell ye,
lad, when a man and wife love GOD and each other, and live in the
country, a bit of ground like this becomes a very garden of Eden."

"Did your wife like your poetry, sir?" said Jan, on whom the idea
that the schoolmaster was a poet made a strong impression.

"Ay, ay, Jan.  She was a good scholar.  I wrote a bit about that
time called Love and Ambition, in the style of the poet Wordsworth.
It was as much as to say that Love had killed Ambition, ye
understand?  But it wasn't dead.  It had only shifted to another
object.

"We had a child.  I remember the first day his blue eyes looked at
me with what I may call sense in 'em.  He was in his cradle, and
there was no one but me with him.  I went on like a fool.  'See
thee, my son,' I said, 'thy father's been a bad 'un, but he'll keep
thee as pure as thy mother.  Thy father's a poor scholar, but he's
not THAT dull but what he'll make THEE as learned as the parson.
Thy father's a needy man, a man in a small way, but he and thy
mother'll stick here in this dull bit of a village, content, ay, my
lad, right happy, so thou'rt a rich man, and can see the world!'  I
give ye my word, Jan, the child looked at me as if he understood it
all.  You're wondering, maybe, what made me hope he'd do different
to what I'd done.  But, ye see, his mother was just an angel, and I
reckoned he'd be half like her.  Then she'd lived with gentlefolks
from a child, and knew manners and such like that I never learned.
And for as little as I'd taught myself, he'd at any rate begin where
his father left off.  He was all we had.  There seemed no fault in
him.  His mother dressed him like a little prince, and his manners
were the same.  Ah, we WERE happy!  Then" -

"Well, Master Swift?" said Jan, for the schoolmaster had paused.

"Can't ye see the place is empty?" he answered sharply.  "Who takes
bite or sup with me but Rufus?  SHE DIED.

"I'd have gone mad but for the boy.  All my thought was to make up
her loss to him.  A child learns a man to be unselfish, Jan.  I used
to think, 'GOD may well be the very fount of unselfish charity, when
He has so many children, so helpless without Him!'  I think He
taught me how to do for that boy.  I dressed him, I darned his
socks:  what work I couldn't do I put out, but I had no one in.
When I came in from school, I cleaned myself, and changed my boots,
to give him his meals.  Rufus and I eat off the table now, but I
give ye my word when he was alive we'd three clean cloths a week,
and he'd a pinny every day; and there's a silver fork and spoon in
yon drawer I saved up to buy him, and had his name put on.  I taught
him too.  He loved poetry as well as his father.  He could say most
of Milton's 'Lycidas.'  It was an unlucky thing to have learned him
too!  Eh, Jan! we're poor fools.  I lay awake night after night
reconciling my mind to troubles that were never to come, and never
dreaming of what WAS before me.  I thought to myself, 'John Swift,
my lad, you're making yourself a bed of thorns.  As sure as you make
your son a gentleman, so sure he'll look down on his old father when
he gets up.  Can ye bear that, John Swift, and HER dead, and him all
that ye have?'  I didn't ask myself twice, Jan.  Of course I could
bear it.  Would any parent stop his child from being better than
himself because he'd be looked down on?  I never heard of one.  'I
want him to think me rough and ignorant,' says I, 'for I want him to
know what's better.  And I shan't expect him to think on how I've
slaved for him, till he's children of his own, and their mother a
lady.  But when I'm dead,' I says, 'and he stands by my grave, and I
can't shame him no more with my common ways, he'll say, "The old man
did his best for me," for he has his mother's feelings.'  I tell ye,
Jan, I cried like a child to think of him standing at my burying in
a good black coat and a silk scarf like a gentleman, and I no more
thought of standing at his than if he was bound to live for ever.
And, mind ye, I did all I could to improve myself.  I learned while
I was teaching, and read all I could lay my hands on.  Books of
travels made me wild.  I was young still, and I'd have given a deal
to see the world.  But I was saving every penny for him.  'He'll see
it all,' says I, 'and that's enough,--Italy and Greece, and Egypt,
and the Holy Land.  And he'll see the sea (which I never saw but
once, and that was at Cleethorpes), and he'll go to the tropics, and
see flowers that 'ud just turn his old father's head, and he'll
write and tell me of 'em, for he's got his mother's feelings.' . . .
My GOD!  He never passed the parish bounds, and he's lain alongside
of her in yon churchyard for five and thirty years!"

Master Swift's head sank upon his breast, and he was silent, as if
in a trance, but Jan dared not speak.  The silence was broken by
Rufus, who got up and stuffed his nose into the schoolmaster's hand.

"Poor lad!" said his master, patting him.  "Thou'rt a good soul,
too!  Well, Jan, I'm here, ye see.  It didn't kill me.  I was off my
head a bit, I believe, but they kept the school for me, and I got to
work again.  I'm rough pottery, lad, and take a deal of breaking.
I've took up with dumb animals, too, a good deal.  At least, they've
took up with me.  Most of 'em's come, like Rufus, of themselves.
Mangy puppies no one would own, cats with kettles to their tails,
and so on.  I've always had a bit of company to my meals, and that's
the main thing.  Folks has said to me, 'Master Swift, I don't know
how you can keep on schooling.  I reckon you can hardly abide the
sight of boys now you've lost your own.'  But they're wrong, Jan:
it seemed to give me a kind of love for every lad I lit upon.

"Are ye thinking ambition was dead in the old man at last?  It came
to life again, Jan.  After a bit, I says to myself, 'In a dull place
like this there's doubtless many a boy that might rise that never
has the chance that I'd have given to mine.  For what says the poet
Gray? -

     "But Knowledge to their eyes her ample page,
        Rich with the spoils of Time, did ne'er unroll."'

"I think, Jan, sometimes, I'm like Rachel, who'd rather have taken
to her servant's children than have had none.  I thought, 'If
there's a genius in obscurity here, I'll come across the boy, being
schoolmaster, and I'll do for him as I'd have done for my own.'
Jan, I've seen nigh on seven generations of lads pass through this
school, but HE'S NEVER COME!  Society's quit of that blame.  There's
been no 'mute, inglorious Miltons' here since I come to this place.
There's been many a nice-tempered lad I've loved, for I'm fond of
children, but never one that yearned to see places he'd never seen,
or to know things he'd never heard of.  There's no fool like an old
one, and I think I've been more disappointed as time went on.  I
submitted myself to the Lord's will years ago; but I HAVE prayed
Him, on my knees, since He didn't see fit to raise me and mine, to
let me have that satisfaction to help some other man's son to
knowledge and to fame.

"Jan Lake," said Master Swift, "when I found you in yon wood, I
found what I've looked for in vain for thirty-five years.  Have I
been schoolmaster so long, d'ye think, and don't know one boy's face
from another?  Lad? is it possible ye don't CARE to be a great man?"

Jan cared very much, but he was afraid of Master Swift; and it was
by an effort that he summoned up courage to say, -

"Couldn't I be a great painter, Master Swift, don't 'ee think?"

The old man frowned impatiently.  "What have I been telling ye?  The
Fine Arts are not the road to fame for working-men.  Jan, Jan, be
guided by me.  Learn what I bid ye.  And when ye've made name and
fortune the way I show ye, ye can buy paints and paintings at your
will, and paint away to please your leisure hours."

It did not need the gentle Abel's after-counsel to persuade Jan to
submit himself to the schoolmaster's direction.

"I'll do as ye bid me, Master Swift; indeed, I will, sir," said he.

But, when the pleased old man rambled on of fame and fortune, it
must be confessed that Jan but thought of them as the steps to those
hours of wealthy leisure in which he could buy paints and indulge
the irrepressible bent of his genius without blame.



CHAPTER XXIII.

THE WHITE HORSE IN CLOVER.--AMABEL AND HER GUARDIANS.--AMABEL IN THE
WOOD.--BOGY.

The white horse lived to see good days.  He got safely home, and
spent the winter in a comfortable stable, with no work but being
exercised for the good of his health by the stable-boy.  It was
expensive, but expense was not a first consideration with the
Squire, and when he had once decided a matter, he was not apt to
worry himself with regrets.  As to Amabel the very narrowness of the
white horse's escape from death exalted him at once to the place of
first favorite in her tender heart, even over the head (and ears) of
the new donkey.

"Miss Amabel's" interest in the cart-horse offended her nurse's
ideas of propriety, and met with no sympathy from her mother or
grandmother.  But she was apt to get her own way; and from time to
time she appeared suddenly, like a fairy-imp, in the stable, where
she majestically directed the groom to hold her up whilst she plied
a currycomb on the old horse's back.  This over, she would ask with
dignity, "Do you take care of him, Miles?"  And Miles, touching his
cap, would reply, "Certainly, miss, the very greatest of care."  And
Amabel would add, "Does he get plenty to eat, do you think?"
"Plenties to heat, miss," the groom would reply.  And she generally
closed the conversation with, "I'm very glad.  You're a good man,
Miles."

In spring the white horse was turned out into the paddock, where
Amabel had begged that he might die comfortably.  He lived
comfortably instead; and Amabel visited him constantly, and being
perfectly fearless would kiss his white nose as he drooped it into
her little arms.  Her visits to the stable had been discovered and
forbidden, but the scandal was even greater when she was found in
the paddock, standing on an inverted bucket, and grooming the white
horse with Lady Louisa's tortoise-shell dressing-comb.

"They wouldn't let me have the currycomb," said Amabel, who was very
hot, and perfectly self-satisfied.  Lady Louisa was in despair, but
the Squire laughed.  The ladies of his family had been great
horsewomen for generations.

In the early summer, some light carting being required by the
gardener, he begged leave to employ "Miss Amabel's old horse," who
came at last to trot soberly to the town with a light cart for
parcels, when the landlord of the Crown would point him out in proof
of the Squire's sagacity in horse-flesh.

But it was not by her attachment to the cart-horse alone that Amabel
disturbed the composure of the head-nurse and of Louise the bonne.
She was a very Will-o'-the-wisp for wandering.  She grew rapidly,
and the stronger she grew the more of a Tom-boy she became.  Beyond
the paddock lay another field, whose farthest wall was the boundary
of a little wood,--the wood where Jan had herded pigs.  Into this
wood it had long been Amabel's desire to go.  But nurses have a
preference for the high road, and object to climbing walls, and she
had not had her wish.  She had often peeped through a hole in the
wall, and had smelt honeysuckle.  Once she had climbed half way up,
and had fallen on her back in the ditch.  Louise uttered a thousand
and one exclamations when Amabel came home after this catastrophe;
and Nurse, distrusting the success of any real penalties in her
power, fell back upon imaginary ones.

"I'm sure it's a mercy you have got back, Miss Amabel," said she;
"for Bogy lives in that wood; and, if you'd got in, it's ten to one
he'd have carried you off."

"You SAID Bogy lived in the cellar," said Amabel.

Nurse was in a dilemma which deservedly besets people who tell
untruths.  She had to invent a second one to help out her first.

"That's at night," said she:  "he lives in the wood in the daytime."

"Then I can go into the cellar in the day, and the wood at night,"
retorted Amabel; but in her heart she knew the latter was
impossible.

For some days Nurse's fable availed.  Amabel had suffered a good
deal from Bogy; and, though the fear of him did not seem so terrible
by daylight, she had no wish to meet him.  But one lovely afternoon,
wandering round the field for cowslips, Amabel came to the wall, and
could not but peep over to see if there were any flowers to be seen.
She was too short to do this without climbing, and it ended in her
struggling successfully to the top.  There were violets on the other
side, and Amabel let down one big foot to a convenient hole, whence
she hoped to be able to stoop and catch at the violets without
actually treading in Bogy's domain.  But once more she slipped and
rolled over,--this time into the wood.  Bogy lingered, and she got
on to her feet; but the wall was deeper on this side than the other,
and she saw with dismay that it was very doubtful if she could get
back.

I think, as a rule, children are very brave.  But a light heart goes
a long way towards courage.  At first Amabel made desperate and
knee-grazing efforts to reclimb the wall, and, failing, burst into
tears, and danced, and called aloud on all her protectors, from the
Squire to Miles.  No one coming, she restrained her tears, and by a
real effort of that "pluck" for which the Ammaby race is famous
began to run along the wall to find a lower point for climbing.  In
doing so, she startled a squirrel, and whizz!--away he went up a
lanky tree.  What a tail he had!  Amabel forgot her terrors.  There
was at any rate some living thing in the wood besides Bogy; and she
was now busy trying to coax the squirrel down again by such
encouraging noises as she had found successful in winning the
confidence of kittens and puppies.  Amabel was the victim of that
weakness for falling in love with every fussy, intelligent, or
pitiable beast she met with, which besets some otherwise reasonable
beings, leading to an inconvenient accumulation of pets in private
life, though doubtless invaluable in the public services of people
connected with the Zoological Gardens.

The squirrel sat under the shadow of his own tail, and winked.  He
had not the remotest intention of coming down.  Amabel was calmer
now, and she looked about her.  The eglantine bushes were shoulder-
high, but she had breasted underwood in the shrubberies, and was not
afraid.  Up, up, stretched the trees to where the sky shone blue.
The wood itself sloped downwards; the spotted arums pushed boldly
through last year's leaves, which almost hid the violets; there were
tufts of primroses, which made Amabel cry out, and about them lay
the exquisite mauve dog-violets in unplucked profusion.  And hither
and thither darted the little birds; red-breasts and sparrows, and
yellow finches and blue finches, and blackbirds and thrushes, with
their cheerful voices and soft waistcoats, and, indeed, every good
quality but that of knowing how glad one would be to kiss them.  In
a few steps, Amabel came upon a path going zig-zag down the steep of
the wood, and, nodding her hooded head determinedly, she said,
"Amabel is going a walk.  I don't mind Bogy," and followed her nose.

It is a pity that one's skirt, when held up, does not divide itself
into compartments, like some vegetable dishes.  One is so apt to get
flowers first, and then lumps of moss, which spoil the flowers, and
then more moss, which, earth downwards (as bread and butter falls),
does no good to the rest.  Amabel had on a nice, new dress, and it
held things beautifully.  But it did not hold enough, for at each
step of the zig-zag path the moss grew lovelier.  She had got some
extinguisher-moss from the top of the wall, and this now lay under
all the rest, which flattened the extinguishers.  About half way
down the dress was full, and some cushion-moss appeared that could
not be passed by.  Amabel sat down and reviewed her treasures.  She
could part with nothing, and she had just caught sight of some cup-
moss lichen for dolls' wine-glasses.  But, by good luck, she was
provided with a white sun-bonnet, as clean and whole as her dress;
and this she took off and filled.  It was less fortunate that the
scale-mosses and liverworts, growing nearer to the stream, came
last, and, with the damp earth about them, lay a-top of every thing,
flowers, dolls' wine-glasses, and all.  It was a noble collection--
but heavy.  Amabel's face flushed, and she was slightly
overbalanced, but she staggered sturdily along the path, which was
now level.

She had quite forgotten Nurse's warning, when she came suddenly upon
a figure crouched in her path, and gazing at her with large, black
eyes.  Her fat cheeks turned pale, and with a cry of, "It's Bogy!"
she let down the whole contents of her dress into one of Jan's leaf-
pictures.

"Don't hurt me!  Don't take me away!  Please, please don't!" she
cried, dancing wildly.

"I won't hurt you, Miss.  I be going to help you to pick 'em up,"
said Jan.  By the time he had returned her treasures to her skirt,
Amabel had regained confidence, especially as she saw no signs of
the black bag in which naughty children are supposed to be put.

"What are you doing, Bogy?" said she.

"I be making a picture, Miss," said Jan, pointing it out.

"Go on making it, please," said Amabel; and she sat down and watched
him.

"Do you like this wood, Bogy?" she asked, softly, after a time.

"I do, Miss," said Jan.

"Why don't you sleep in it, then?  I wouldn't sleep in a cellar, if
I were you."

"I don't sleep in a cellar, Miss."

"Nurse SAYS you do," said Amabel, nodding emphatically.

Jan was at a loss how to express the full inaccuracy of Nurse's
statement in polite language, so he was silent; rapidly adding tint
to tint from his heap of leaves, whilst the birds sang overhead, and
Amabel sat with her two bundles watching him.

"I thought you were an old man!" she said, at length.

"Oh, no, Miss," said Jan, laughing.

"You don't look very bad," Amabel continued.

"I don't think I be very bad," said Jan, modestly.

Amabel's next questions came at short intervals, like dropping
shots.

"Do you say your prayers, Bogy?"

"Yes, Miss."

"Do you go to church, Bogy?"

"Yes, Miss."

"Then where do you sit?"

"In the choir, Miss; the end next to Squire Ammaby's big pew."

"DO YOU?" said Amabel.  She had been threatened with Bogy for
misbehavior in church, and it was startling to find that he sat so
near.  She changed the subject, under a hasty remembrance of having
once made a face at the parson through a hole in the bombazine
curtains.

"Why don't you paint with paints, Bogy?" said she.

"I haven't got none, Miss," said Jan.

"I've got a paint-box," said Amabel.  "And, if you like, I'll give
it to you, Bogy."

The color rushed to Jan's face.

"Oh, thank you, Miss!" he cried.

"You must dip the paints in water, you know, and rub them on a
plate; and don't let them lie in a puddle," said Amabel, who loved
to dictate.

"Thank you, Miss," said Jan.

"And don't put your brush in your mouth," said Amabel.

"Oh, dear, no, Miss," said Jan.  It had never struck him that one
could want to put a paint-brush in one's mouth.

At this point Amabel's overwrought energies suddenly failed her, and
she burst out crying.  "I don't know how I shall get over the wall,"
said she.

"Don't 'ee cry, Miss.  I'll help you," said Jan.

"I can't walk any more," sobbed Amabel, who was, indeed, tired out.

"I'll take 'ee on my back," said Jan.  "Don't 'ee cry."

With a good deal of difficulty, Amabel was hoisted up, and planted
her big feet in Jan's hands.  It was no light pilgrimage for poor
Jan, as he climbed the winding path.  Amabel was peevish with
weariness; her bundles were sadly in the way, and at every step a
cup-moss or marchantia dropped out, and Amabel insisted upon its
being picked up.  But they reached the wall at last, and Jan got her
over, and made two or three expeditions after the missing mosses,
before the little lady was finally content.

"Good-by, Bogy," she said, at last, holding up her face to be
kissed.  "And thank you very much.  I'm not frightened of you,
Bogy."

As Jan kissed her, he said, smiling, "What is your name, love?"

And she said, "Amabel."

To her parents and guardians, Amabel made the following statement:
"I've seen Bogy.  I like him.  He doesn't sleep in the cellar, so
Nurse told a story.  And he didn't take me away, so that's another
story.  He says his prayers, and he goes to church, so he can't be
the Bad Man.  He makes pictures with leaves.  He carried me on his
back, but not in a bag" -

At this point the outraged feelings of Lady Craikshaw exploded, and
she rang the bell, and ordered Miss Amabel to be put to bed with a
dose of rhubarb and magnesia (without sal-volatile), for telling
stories.

"The eau-de-Cologne, mamma dear, please," said Lady Louisa, as the
door closed on the struggling, screaming, and protesting Amabel.
"Isn't it really dreadful?  But Esmerelda Ammaby says Henry used to
tell shocking stories when he was a little boy."



CHAPTER XXIV.

THE PAINT-BOX.--MASTER LINSEED'S SHOP.--THE NEW SIGN-BOARD.--MASTER
SWIFT AS WILL SCARLET.

On Sunday morning Jan took his place in church with unusual
feelings.  He looked here, there, and everywhere for the little
damsel of the wood, but she was not to be seen.  Meanwhile she had
not sent the paint box, and he feared it would never come.  He
fancied she must be the Squire's little daughter, but he was not
sure, and she certainly was not in the big pew, where the back of
the Squire's red head and Lady Louisa's aquiline nose were alone
visible.  She was a dear little soul, he thought.  He wondered why
she called him Bogy.  Perhaps it was a way little ladies had of
addressing their inferiors.

Jan did not happen to guess that, Amabel being very young, the
morning services were too long for her.  In the afternoon he had
given her up, but she was there.

The old Rector had reached the third division of his sermon, and
Lady Craikshaw was asleep, when Amabel, mounting the seat with her
usual vigor, pushed her Sunday hood through the bombazine curtains,
and said, -

"Bogy!"

Jan looked up, and then started to his feet as Amabel stuffed the
paint-box into his hands.  "I pushed it under my frock," she said in
a stage whisper.  "It made me so tight?  But grandmamma is such" -

Jan heard and saw no more.  Amabel's footing was apt to be insecure;
she slipped upon the cushions and disappeared with a crash.

Jan trembled as he clasped the shallow old cedar-wood box.  He
wondered if the colors would prove as bright as those in the window.
He fancied the wan, ascetic faces there rejoiced with him.  When he
got home, he sat under the shadow of the mill, and drew back the
sliding lid of the box.  Brushes, and twelve hard color cakes.  They
were Ackermann's, and very good.  Cheap paint-boxes were not made
then.  He read the names on the back of them:  Neutral Tint,
Prussian Blue, Indian Red, Yellow Ochre, Brown Madder, Brown Pink,
Burnt Umber, Vandyke Brown, Indigo, King's Yellow, Rose Madder, and
Ivory Black.

It says much for Jan's uprightness of spirit, and for the sense of
duty in which the schoolmaster was training him, that he did not
neglect school for his new treasure.  Happily for him the sun rose
early, and Jan rose with it, and taking his paint-box to the little
wood, on scraps of parcel paper and cap paper, on bits of wood and
smooth white stones, he blotted-in studies of color, which he
finished from memory at odd moments in the windmill.

In the summer holidays, Jan had more time for sketching.  But the
many occasions on which he could not take his paints with him led
him to observe closely, and taught him to paint from memory with
wonderful exactness.  He was also obliged to reduce his outlines and
condense his effects to a very small scale to economize paper.

About this time he heard that Master Chuter was going to have a new
sign painted for the inn.  Master Linseed was to paint it.

Master Linseed's shop had been a place of resort for Jan in some of
his leisure time.  At first the painter and decorator had been
churlish enough to him, but, finding that Jan was skilful with a
brush, he employed him again and again to do his work, for which he
received instead of giving thanks.  Jan went there less after he got
a paint-box, and could produce effects with good materials of his
own, instead of making imperfect experiments in color on bits of
wood in the painter's shop.

But in this matter of the new sign-board he took the deepest
interest.  He had a design of his own for it, which he was most
anxious the painter should adopt.  "Look 'ee, Master Linseed," said
he.  "It be the Heart of Oak.  Now I know a oak-tree with a big
trunk and two arms.  They stretches out one on each side, and the
little branches closes in above till 'tis just like a heart.
'Twould be beautiful, Master Linseed, and I could bring 'ee leaves
of the oak so that 'ee could match the yellows and greens.  And then
there'd be trees beyond and beyond, smaller and smaller, and all
like a blue mist between them, thee know.  That blue in the paper
'ee've got would just do, and with more white to it 'twould be
beautiful for the sky.  And" -

"And who's to do all that for a few shillings?" broke in the
painter, testily.  "And Master Chuter wants it done and hung up for
the Foresters' dinner."

Since the pressing nature of the commission was Master Linseed's
excuse for not adopting his idea for the sign, it seemed strange to
Jan that he did not set about it in some fashion.  But he delayed
and delayed, till Master Chuter was goaded to repeat the old rumor
that real sign-painting was beyond his powers.

It was within a week of the dinner that the little innkeeper burst
indignantly into the painter's shop.  Master Linseed was ill in bed,
and the sign-board lay untouched in a corner.

"It be a kind of fever that's on him," said his wife.

"It be a kind of fiddlestick!" said the enraged Master Chuter; and
turning round his eye fell on Jan, who was looking as disconsolate
as himself.  Day after day had he come in hopes of seeing Master
Linseed at work, and now it seemed indefinitely postponed.  But the
innkeeper's face brightened, and, seizing Jan by the shoulder, he
dragged him from the shop.

"Look 'ee here, Jan Lake," said he.  "Do 'ee thenk THEE could paint
the sign?  I dunno what I'd give 'ee if 'ee could, if 'twere only to
spite that humbugging old hudmedud yonder."

Jan felt as if his brain were on fire.  "If 'ee'll get me the
things, Master Chuter," he gasped, "and'll let me paint it in your
place, I'll do it for 'ee for nothin'."

The innkeeper was not insensible to this consideration, but his
chief wish was to spite Master Linseed.  He lost no time in making
ready, and for the rest of the week Jan lived between the tallet (or
hay-loft) of the inn and the wood where he had first studied trees.
Master Chuter provided him with sheets of thick whitey-brown paper,
on which he made water-color studies, from which he painted
afterwards.  By his desire no one was admitted to the tallet, though
Master Chuter's delight increased with the progress of the picture
till the secret was agony to him.  Towards the end of the week they
were disturbed by a scuffling on the tallet stairs, and Rufus
bounced in, followed at a slower pace by the schoolmaster, crying,
"Unearthed at last!"

"Come in, come in!  That's right!" shouted Master Chuter.  "Let
Master Swift look, Jan.  He be a scholar, and'll tell us all about
un."

But Jan shrank into the shadow.  The schoolmaster stood in the light
of the open shutter, towards which the painting was sloped, and
Rufus sat by him on his haunches, and blinked with all the gravity
of a critic; and in the half light between them and the stairs stood
the fat little innkeeper, with his hands on his knees, crying,
"There, Master Swift!  Did 'ee ever see any thing to beat that?
Artis' or ammytoor!"

Jan's very blood seemed to stand still.  As Master Swift put on his
spectacles, each fault in the painting sprang to the front and
mocked him.  It was indeed a wretched daub!

But Jan had been studying the scene under every lovely light of
heaven from dawn to dusk for a week of summer days:  Master Swift
carried no such severe test in his brain.  As he raised his head,
the tears were in his eyes, and he held out his hand, saying, "My
lad, it's just the spirit of the woods.

"But d'ye not think a figure or so would enliven it?" he continued.
"One of Robin Hood's foresters 'chasing the flying roe'?"

"FORESTERS!  To be sure!" said Master Chuter.  "What did I say?
Have the schoolmaster in, says I.  He be a scholar, and knows what's
what.  Put 'em in, Jan, put 'em in! there's plenty of room."

What Jan had already suffered from the innkeeper's suggestions, only
an artist can imagine, and his imagination will need no help!

"I'd be main glad to get a bit of red in there," said Jan, in a low
voice, to Master Swift; "but Robin Hood must be in green, sir,
mustn't he?"

"There's Will Scarlet.  Put Will in," said Master Swift, who,
pleased to be appealed to, threw himself warmly into the matter.
"He can have just drawn his bow at a deer out of sight."  And with a
charming simplicity the old schoolmaster flung his burly figure into
an appropriate attitude.

"Stand so a minute!" cried Jan, and seizing a lump of charcoal, with
which he had made his outlines, he rapidly sketched Master Swift's
figure on the floor of the tallet.  Thinned down to what he declared
to have been his dimensions in youth, it was transferred to Jan's
picture, and the touch of red was the culminating point of the
innkeeper's satisfaction.

On the day of the dinner the new sign swung aloft.  "It couldn't dry
better anywhere," said Master Chuter.

Jan "found himself famous."  The whole parish assembled to admire.
The windmiller, in his amazement, could not even find a proverb for
the occasion, whilst Abel hung about the door of the Heart of Oak,
as if he had been the most confirmed toper, saying to all incomers,
"Have 'ee seen the new sign, sir?  'Twas our Jan did un."

His fame would probably have spread more widely, but for a more
overwhelming interest which came to distract the neighborhood, and
which destroyed a neat little project of Master Chuter's for running
up a few tables amongst his kidney-beans, as a kind of "tea garden"
for folk from outlying villages, who, coming in on Sunday afternoons
to service, should also want to see the work of the boy sign-
painter.

It is a curious instance of the inaccuracy of popular impressions
that, when Master Linseed died three days after the Foresters'
dinner, it was universally believed that he had been killed by
vexation at Jan's success.  Nor was this tradition the less firmly
fixed in the village annals, that the disease to which he had
succumbed spread like flames in a gale.  It produced a slight
reaction of sentiment against Jan.  And his achievement was
absolutely forgotten in the shadow of the months that followed.

For it was that year long known in the history of the district as
the year of the Black Fever.



CHAPTER XXV.

SANITARY INSPECTORS.--THE PESTILENCE.--THE PARSON.--THE DOCTOR.--THE
SQUIRE AND THE SCHOOLMASTER.--DESOLATION AT THE WINDMILL.--THE
SECOND ADVENT.

I remember a "cholera year" in a certain big village.  The activity
of the sanitary authorities (and many and vain had been the efforts
to rouse them to activity BEFORE) was, for them, remarkable.  A good
many heads of households died with fearful suddenness and not less
fearful suffering.  Several nuisances were "seen to," some tar-
barrels were burnt, and the scourge passed by.  Not long ago a
woman, whose home is in a court where some of the most flagrant
nuisances existed, in talking to me, casually alluded to one of
them.  It had been ordered to be removed, she said, in the cholera
year when the gentlemen were going round; but the cholera went away,
and it remained among those things which were NOT "seen to," and for
aught I know flourishes still.  She was a sensible and affectionate
person.  Living away from her home at that time, she became anxious
at once for the welfare of her relatives if they neglected to write
to her.  But she had never an anxiety on the subject of that
unremedied abomination which was poisoning every breath they drew.
That "the gentlemen who went round" felt it superfluous to have
their orders carried out when strong men were no longer sickening
and dying within two revolutions of the hands of the church clock
will surprise no one who has had to do with local sanitary officers.
They are like the children of Israel, and will only do their duty
under the pressure of a plague.  The people themselves are more like
the Egyptians.  Plagues won't convince them.  A mother with all her
own and her neighbors' children sickening about her would walk miles
in a burst shoe to fetch the doctor or a big bottle of medicine, but
she won't walk three yards farther than usual to draw her house-
water from the well that the sewer doesn't leak into.  That is a
fact, not a fable; and, in the cases I am thinking of, all medical
remonstrance was vain.  Uneducated people will take any thing in
from the doctor through their mouths, but little or nothing through
their ears.

When such is the state of matters in busy, stirring districts, among
shrewd artisans, and when our great seat of learning smells as it
does smell under the noses of the professors, it is needless to say
that the "black fever" found every household in the little village
prepared to contribute to its support, and met with hardly an
obstacle on its devastating path.

To comment on Master Salter's qualifications for the post of
sanitary inspector would be to insult the reader's understanding.
Of course he owned several of the picturesque little cottages where
the refuse had to be pitched out at the back, and the slops chucked
out in front, and where the general arrangements for health,
comfort, and decency were such as one must forbear to speak of,
since, on such matters, our ears--Heaven help us!--have all that
delicacy which seems denied to our noses.

If the causes of the calamity were little understood, portents were
plentifully noted.  The previous winter had been mild.  A
thunderbolt fell in the autumn.  There was a blight on the
gooseberries, and Master Salter had a calf with two heads.  As to
the painter, a screech-owl had been heard to cry from his chimney-
top, not three weeks before his death.

There was a pause of a day or so after Master Linseed died, and then
victims fell thick and fast.  Children playing happily with their
mimic boats on the open drain that ran lazily under the noontide
sun, by the footpath of the main street, were coffined for their
hasty burial before the sun had next reached his meridian.  The
tears were hardly dry in their parents' eyes before these also were
closed in their last sleep.  The very aged seemed to linger on, but
strong men sickened and died; and at the end of the week more than
one woman was left sitting by an empty hearth, a worn-out creature
whom Death seemed only to have forgotten to take away.

At first there was a reckless disregard of infection among the
neighbors.  But, after one or two of these family desolations, this
was succeeded by a panic, and even the noble charity which the poor
commonly show to each other's troubles failed, and no one could be
got to nurse the sick or bury the dead.

Now the Rector was an old man.  Most of the parish officers were
aged, and patriarchs in white smock frocks were as plentiful as
creepers at the cottage doors.  The healthy breezes and the dull
pace at which life passed in the district seemed to make men slow to
wear out.  If the Rector had profited by these features of the
parish in health, it must be confessed that they had also had their
influence on his career.  He was a good man, and a learned one.  He
stuck close to his living, and he was benevolent.  But he was not of
those heroic natures who can resist the influence of the mental
atmosphere around them; and in a dull parish, in a sleepy age, he
had not been an active parson.  Some men, however, who cannot make
opportunities for themselves, can do nobly enough if the chance
comes to them; and this chance came to the Rector in his sixty-ninth
year, on the wings of the black fever.  To quicken spiritual life in
the soul of a Master Salter he had not the courage even to attempt;
but a panic of physical cowardice had not a temptation for him.  And
so it came about that of four men who stayed the panic, by the
example of their own courage, who went from house to house, and from
sick-bed to sick-bed--who drew a cordon round the parish, and
established kitchens and a temporary hospital, and nursed the sick,
and encouraged the living, and buried the dead,--the most active was
the old Rector.

The other three were the parish doctor, Squire Ammaby, and the
schoolmaster.

On the very first rumor of the epidemic, Lady Louisa had carried off
Amabel, and had gone with Lady Craikshaw to Brighton.  Both the
ladies were indignant with the Squire's obstinate resolve to remain
amongst his tenants.  In her alarm, Lady Louisa implored him to sell
the property and buy one in Ireland, which was Lady Craikshaw's
native country; and the list she contrived to run up of the
drawbacks to the Ammaby estate would have driven a temper less
stolid than her husband's to distraction.

When the fever broke out among the children, the schools were
closed, and Master Swift devoted his whole time to laboring with the
parson, the doctor, and the Squire.

No part of the Rector's devotion won more affectionate gratitude
from his people than a single act of thoughtfulness, by which he
preserved a record of the graves of their dead.  He had held firmly
on to a decent and reverent burial, and, foreseeing that the poor
survivors would be quite unable to afford gravestones, he kept a
strict list of the dead, and where they were buried, which was
afterwards transferred to one large monument, which was bought by
subscription.  He cut the village off from all communication with
the outer world, to prevent a spread of the disease; but he sent
accounts of the calamity to the public papers, which brought
abundant help in money for the needs of the parish.  And in these
matters the schoolmaster was his right-hand man.

The disease was most eccentric in its path.  Having scourged one
side only of the main street, it burst out with virulence in
detached houses at a distance.  Then it returned to the village, and
after lulls and outbreaks it ceased as suddenly as it began.

It was about midway in its career that it fell with all its wrath
upon Master Lake's windmill.

The mill stood in a healthy position, but the dwelling room was ill-
ventilated, and there were defective sanitary arrangements, which
Master Swift had anxiously pointed out to the miller.  The plague
had begun in the village, and the schoolmaster trembled for Jan.
But Master Lake was not to be interfered with, and, when the
schoolmaster spoke of poison, thought himself witty as he replied, -

"It be a uncommon slow pison then, Master Swift."

It must also be allowed that such epidemics, once started, do havoc
in apparently clean houses and amongst well-fed people.

It was a little foster-sister of Jan's who sickened first.  She died
within two days.  Her burial was hasty enough, but Mrs. Lake had no
time to fret about that, for a second child was ill.  Like many
another householder, the poor windmiller was now ready enough to
look to his drains, and so forth; but it may be doubted if the
general stirring up of dirty places at this moment did not do as
much harm as good.  It was hot,--terribly hot.  Day after day passed
without a breeze to cool the burning skins of the sick, and yet it
was not sunshiny.  People did say that the pestilence hung like a
murky vapor above the district, and hid the sun.

Trades were slack, corn-grinding amongst the rest, and Master Lake
did the housework, helped by Jan and Abel.  He was stunned by the
suddenness and the weight of the calamity which had come to him.  He
was very kind to Mrs. Lake, but the poor woman was almost past any
feeling but that which, as a sort of instinct or inspiration, guided
a constant watching and waiting on her sick children.  She never
slept, and would not have eaten, but that Master Lake used his
authority to force some food upon her.  At this time Jan's chief
occupations were cookery and dish-washing.  His constant habit of
observation made all the experiences of life an education for him;
he had often watched his foster-mother prepare the family meals, and
he prepared them now, for Abel and the windmiller could not, and she
was with the sick children.

Before the second child died, two more fell ill on the same day.
Only Abel and Jan were still "about."  The mother moved like an
automaton, and never spoke.  Now and then a deep sigh or a low moan
would escape her, and the miller would move tenderly to her side,
and say, "Bear up, missus; bear up, my lass," and then go back to
his pipe and his cherry-wood chair, where he seemed to grow gray as
he sat.

Master Swift came from time to time to the mill.  He was everywhere,
helping, comforting, and exhorting.  Some said his face shone with
the light of another world, for which he was "marked."  Others
whispered that the strain was telling on him, and that it wore the
look it had had in the brief insanity which followed his child's
death.  But all agreed that the very sight of him brought help and
consolation.  The windmiller grew to watch for him, and to lean on
him in the helplessness of his despair.  And he listened humbly to
the old man's fervid religious counsels.  His own little threads of
philosophy were all blowing loose and useless in this storm of
trouble.

The evening that Master Swift came up to arrange about the burial of
the second child, he found the other two just dead.  The first two
had suffered much and been delirious, but these two had sunk
painlessly in a few hours, and had fallen asleep for the last time
in each other's arms.

It did not lessen the force of Master Swift's somewhat stern
consolations that in all good faith he conveyed in them an
expectation that the Last Day was at hand.  Many people thought so,
and it was, perhaps, not unnatural.  In these days, which were long
years of suffering, they were shut off from the rest of humanity,
and the village was the world to them,--a world very near its end.
With Death so busy, it seemed as if Judgment could hardly linger
long.

It is true that this did not form a part of the Rector's religious
exhortations.  But some good people were shocked by the tea-party
that he gave to the young people of the place, and the games that
followed it in the Rectory meads, at the very height of the fever;
though the doctor said it was better than a hogshead of medicine.

"To encourage low spirits in this panic is just to promote suicide,
if ye like the responsibeelity of that," said the doctor to Master
Swift, who had confided his doubts as to the seemliness of the
entertainment.  "I tell ye there's a lairge proportion of folk dies
just because their neighbors have died before them, for the want of
their attention being directed to something else.  Away wi' ye,
schoolmaster, and take your tuning-fork to ask the blessing wi'.
What says the Scripture, man?  'The living, the living, he shall
praise Thee!'"

The doctor was a Scotchman, and Master Swift always listened with
sympathy to a North countryman.  He was convinced, too, and took his
tuning-fork to the meals, and led the grace.

Nor could his expectation of the speedy end of all things restrain
his instinctive anxiety and watchfulness for Jan's health.  On the
evening of that visit to the mill, he used some little manoeuvring
to accomplish Jan's being sent back with him to the village, to
arrange for the burial of the three children.

A glow of satisfaction suffused his rough face as he got Jan out of
the tainted house into the fresh evening air, though it paled again
before that other look which was now habitual to him, as, waving his
hand towards the ripening corn-fields, he quoted from one of Mr.
Herbert's loftiest hymns, -

     "We talk of harvests,--there are no such things,
        But when we leave our corn and hay.
      There is no fruitful year but that which brings
        The last and loved, though dreadful Day.
              Oh, show Thyself to me,
              Or take me up to Thee!"



CHAPTER XXVI.

THE BEASTS OF THE VILLAGE.--ABEL SICKENS.--THE GOOD SHEPHERD.--RUFUS
PLAYS THE PHILANTHROPIST.--MASTER SWIFT SEES THE SUN RISE.--THE
DEATH OF THE RIGHTEOUS.

Amid the havoc made by the fever amongst men, women, and children,
the immunity of the beasts and birds had a sad strangeness.

There was a small herd of pigs which changed hands three times in
ten days.  The last purchaser hesitated, and was only induced by the
cheapness of the bargain to suppress a feeling that they brought
ill-luck.  Cats mewed wistfully about desolated hearths.  One dog
moaned near the big grave in which his master lay, and others, with
sad sagacious eyes, went to look for new friends and homes.

It was a day or two after the burial of the miller's three children,
that, as Jan sat at dinner with Abel and his two parents, he was
struck by the way in which the mill cats hung about Abel, purring
and rubbing themselves against his legs.

"I do think they misses the others," he whispered to his foster-
brother, and his tears fell thick and fast on to his plate.

Abel made no answer.  He did not wish Jan to know that he had given
all his food by bits to the cats, because he could not swallow it
himself.  But, later in the day, Jan found him in the round-house,
lying on an empty sack, with his head against a full one.

"Don't 'ee tell mother," he said; "but I do feel bad."

And as Jan sat down, and put his arms about him, on the very spot
where they had so often sat together, learning the alphabet and
educating their thumbs, Abel laid his head on his foster-brother's
shoulder, saying, -

"I do think, Janny dear, that Mary, she wants me, and the others
too.  I think I be going after them.  But thee'll look to mother,
Janny dear, eh?"

"But _I_ want thee, too, Abel dear," sobbed Jan.

"I be thinking perhaps them that brought thee hither'll fetch thee
away some day, Jan.  But thee'll see to mother?" repeated Abel, his
eyes wandering restlessly with a look of pain.

Jan knew now that he was only an adopted child of the windmill,
though he stoutly ignored the fact, being very fond of his foster-
parents.

Abel's illness came with the force of a fresh blow.  There had been
a slight pause in the course of the fever at the mill, and it seemed
as if these two boys were to be spared.  Abel had been busy helping
his father to burn the infected bedding, etc., that very morning,
and at night he lay raving.

He raved of Jan's picture which swung unheeded above Master Chuter's
door, and confused it with some church-window that he seemed to
fancy Jan had painted; then of his dead brothers and sisters.  And
then from time to time he rambled about a great flock of sheep which
he saw covering the vast plains about the windmill, and which he
wearied himself in trying to count.  And, as he tossed, he
complained in piteous tones about some man who seemed to be the
shepherd, and who would not do something that Abel wanted.

For the most part, he knew no one but Jan, and then only when Jan
touched him.  It seemed to give him pleasure.  He understood nothing
that was said to him, except in brief intervals.  Once, after a
short sleep, he opened his eyes and recognized the schoolmaster.

"Master Swift," said he, "do 'ee think that be our Lord among them
sheep?  With His hair falling on's shoulders, and the light round
His head, and the long frock?"

Master Swift's eyes turned involuntarily in the direction in which
Abel's were gazing.  He saw nothing but the dark corners of the
dwelling-room; but he said, -

"Ay, ay, Abel, my lad."

"What be His frock all red for, then?  Bright red, like blood.  'Tis
like them figures in--in" -

Here Abel wandered again, and only muttered to himself.  But when
Jan crept near to him, and touching him said, "The figures in the
window, Abel dear," he opened his eyes and said, -

"So it be, Janny.  With the sun shining through 'em.  Thee knows."

And then he wailed fretfully, -

"Why do He keep His back to me all along?  I follows Him up and
down, all over, till I be tired.  Why don't He turn His face?"

Jan was speechless from tears, but the old schoolmaster took Abel's
hot hand in his, and said, with infinite tenderness, -

"He will, my lad.  He'll turn His face to thee very soon.  Wait for
Him, Abel."

"Do 'ee think so?" said Abel.  And after a while he muttered, "You
be the schoolmaster, and ought to know."

And, seemingly satisfied, he dozed once more.

Master Swift hurried away.  He had business in the village, and he
wanted to catch the doctor, and ask his opinion of Abel's case.

"Will be get round, sir?" he asked.

The doctor shook his head, and Master Swift felt a double pang.  He
was sorry about Abel, but the real object of his anxiety was Jan.
Once he had hoped the danger was past, but the pestilence seemed
still in full strength at the windmill, and the agonizing conviction
strengthened in his mind that once more his hopes were to be
disappointed, and the desire of his eyes was to be snatched away.
The doctor thought that he was grieving for Abel, and said, -

"I'm just as sorry as yourself.  He's a fine lad, with something
angelic about the face, when ye separate it from its surroundings.
But they've no constitution in that family.  It's just the want of
strength in him, and not the strength of the fever, this time; for
the virulence of the poison's abating.  The cases are recovering
now, except where other causes intervene."

Master Swift felt almost ashamed of the bound in his spirits.  But
the very words which shut out all hope of Abel's recovery opened a
possible door of escape for Jan.  He was not one of the family, and
it was reasonable to hope that his constitution might be of sterner
stuff.  He turned with a lighter heart into his cottage, where he
purposed to get some food and then return to the mill.  There might
be a lucid interval before the end, in which the pious Abel might
find comfort from his lips; and if Jan sickened, he would nurse him
night and day.

Rufus welcomed his master not merely with cordiality, but with
fussiness.  The partly apologetic character of his greeting was
accounted for when a half starved looking dog emerged from beneath
the table, and, not being immediately kicked, wagged the point of
its tail feebly, keeping at a respectful distance, whilst Rufus
introduced it.

"So ye're for playing the philanthropist, are ye?" said Master
Swift.  "Ye've picked up one of these poor houseless, masterless
creatures?  I'm not for undervaluing disinterested charity, Rufus,
my man; but I wish ye'd had the luck to light on a better bred beast
while ye were about it."

It is, perhaps, no disadvantage to what we call "dumb animals" if
they understand the general drift of our remarks without minutely
following every word.  They have generally the sense, too, to leave
well alone, and, without pressing the question of the new comer's
adoption, the two dogs curled themselves round, put their noses into
their pockets, and went to sleep with an air of its being
unnecessary to pursue the topic farther.

Master Swift shared his meal with them, and left them to keep house
when he returned to the mill.

His quick eye, doubly quickened by experience and by anxiety, saw
that Jan's were full of fever, and his limbs languid.  But he would
not quit Abel's side, and Master Swift remained with the afflicted
family.

Abel muttered deliriously all night, with short intervals of
complete stupor.  The fever, like a fire, consumed his strength, and
the fancy that he was toiling over the downs seemed to weary him as
if he had really been on foot.  Just before sunrise, Master Swift
left him asleep, and went to breathe some out-door air.

The fresh, tender light of early morning was over every thing.  The
windmill stood up against the red-barred sky with outlines softened
by the clinging dew.  The plains glistened, and across them, through
the pure air, came the voice of Master Salter's chanticleer from the
distant farm.

It was such a contrast to the scene within that Master Swift burst
into tears.  But even as he wept the sun leaped to the horizon, and,
reflected from every dewdrop, and from the very tears upon the old
man's cheeks, flooded the world about him with its inimitable glory.

The schoolmaster uncovered his head, and kneeling upon the short
grass prayed passionately for the dying boy.  But, as he knelt in
the increasing sunshine, his prayers for the peace of the departing
soul unconsciously passed almost into thanksgiving that so soon, and
so little stained, it should exchange the dingy sick-room--not for
these sweet summer days, which lose their sweetness!--but to taste,
in peace which passeth understanding, what GOD has prepared for them
that love Him.


It was whilst the schoolmaster still knelt outside the windmill that
Abel awoke, and raised his eyes to Jan's with a smile.

"Thee must go out a bit soon, Janny dear," he whispered, "it be such
a lovely day."

Jan was too much pleased to hear him speak to wonder how he knew
what kind of a day it was, and Abel lay with his head in Jan's arms,
breathing painfully and gazing before him.  Suddenly he raised
himself, and cried,--so loudly that the old man outside heard the
cry, -

"Janny dear!  He've turned his face to me.  He be coming right to
me.  Oh!  He" -

But HE had come.



CHAPTER XXVII.

JAN HAS THE FEVER.--CONVALESCENCE IN MASTER SWIFT'S COTTAGE.--THE
SQUIRE ON DEMORALIZATION.

Jan took the fever.  He was very ill, too, partly from grief at
Abel's death.  He had also a not unnatural conviction that he would
die, which was unfavorable to his recovery.

The day on which he gave Master Swift his old etching as a last
bequest, he fairly infected him also with this belief, and during a
necessary visit to the village the schoolmaster hung up the little
picture in his cottage with a breaking heart.

But the next time Rufus saw him, he came to prepare for a visitor.
Jan was recovering, and Master Swift had persuaded the windmiller to
let him come to the cottage for a few days, the rather that Mrs.
Lake was going to stay with a relative whilst the windmill was
thoroughly cleansed and disinfected.  The weather was delightful
now, and, feeble as he had become, Jan soon grew strong again.  If
he had not done so, it would have been from no lack of care on
Master Swift's part.  The old schoolmaster was a thrifty man, and
had some money laid by, or he would have been somewhat pinched at
this time.  As it was, he drew freely upon his savings for Jan's
benefit, and made many expeditions to the town to buy such
delicacies as he thought might tempt his appetite.  Nor was this
all.  The morning when Jan came languidly into the kitchen from the
little inner room, where he and the schoolmaster slept, he saw his
precious paint-box on the table, to fetch which Master Swift had
been to the windmill.  And by it lay a square book with the word
Sketch-book in ornamental characters on the binding, a couple of
Cumberland lead drawing pencils, and a three-penny chunk of bottle
India-rubber, delicious to smell.

If the schoolmaster had had any twinges of regret as he bought these
things, in defiance of his principles for Jan's education, they
melted utterly away in view of his delight, and the glow that
pleasure brought into his pale cheeks.  Master Swift was regarded,
too, by a colored sketch of Rufus sitting at table in his arm-chair,
with his more mongrel friend on the floor beside him.  It was the
best sketch that Jan had yet accomplished.  But most people are
familiar with the curious fact that one often makes an unaccountable
stride in an art after it has been laid aside for a time.

It must not be supposed that Master Swift had neglected his duties
in the village, or left the Parson, the Squire, and the doctor to
struggle on alone, during the illness of Abel and of Jan.  Even now
he was away from the cottage for the greater part of the day, and
Jan was left to keep house with the dogs.  His presence gave great
contentment to Rufus, if it scarcely lessened the melancholy dignity
of his countenance; for dogs who live with human beings never like
being left long alone.  And Jan, for his own part, could have wished
for nothing better than to sit at the table where he had once hoped
to make leaf-pictures, and paint away with materials that Rembrandt
himself would not have disdained.

The pestilence had passed away.  But the labors of the Rector and
his staff rather increased than diminished at this particular point.
To say nothing of those vile wretches who seem to spring out of such
calamities as putrid matter breeds vermin, and who use them as
opportunities for plunder, there were a good many people to be dealt
with of a lighter shade of demoralization,--people who had really
suffered, and whose daily work had been unavoidably stopped, but to
whom idleness was so pleasant, and the fame of their misfortunes so
gratifying, that they preferred to scramble on in dismantled homes,
on the alms extracted by their woes, to setting about such labor as
would place them in comfort.  Then that large class--the shiftless--
was now doubly large, and there were widows and orphans in
abundance, and there was hardly a bed or a blanket in the place.

"I have come," said Mr. Ammaby, joining the Rector as he sat at
breakfast, "to beg you, in the interests of the village, to check
the flow of that fount of benevolence which springs eternal in the
clerical pocket.  You will ruin us with your shillings and half
crowns."

"Bless my soul, Ammaby," said the Rector, pausing with an eggshell
transfixed upon his spoon, "shillings and half crowns don't go far
in the present condition of our households.  There are not ten
families whose beds are not burnt.  What do you propose to do?"

"I'll tell you, when I have first confessed that my ideas are not
entirely original.  I have been studying political economy under
that hard-headed Sandy, our friend the doctor.  In the first place,
from to-morrow, we must cease to GIVE any thing whatever, and both
announce that determination and stick to it."

"And THEN, my dear sir?" said the Rector, smiling; and nursing his
black gaiter.

"And THEN, my dear sir," said Mr. Ammaby, "I shall be able to get
some men to do some work about my place, and those people at a
distance who have widows here will relieve them (at least the widows
will look up their well-to-do relatives), and the Church, in your
person, will not be charged.  And some of the widows will consent to
scrub for payment, instead of sitting weeping in your kitchen--also
for payment.  They will, furthermore, compel their interesting sons
to mind pigs, or scare birds, instead of hanging about the Heart of
Oak, begging of the visitors who now begin to invade us.  Do you
know that the very boys won't settle to work, that the children are
taking to gutter-life and begging, that the women won't even tidy up
their houses, and that the men are retailing the horrors of the
fever in every alehouse in the county, instead of getting in the
crops?  I give you my word, I had to go down to the inn yesterday,
and a lad of eleven or twelve, who didn't recognize me in Chuter's
dark kitchen, came up and began to beg with a whine that would have
done credit to a professional mendicant.  I stood in the shadow and
let him tell his whole story, of a widowed mother and three brothers
and sisters living, and six dead; and when he'd finished, and two
visitors were fumbling in their pockets, I took him by the collar
and lifted him clean through the kitchen and down the yard into the
street.  I nearly knocked Swift over, or rather I nearly fell
myself, from concussion with his burly person, but he was the very
man I wanted.  I said, 'Mr. Swift, may I ask you to do me a favor?
This boy--whose father was a respectable man--has been begging--
BEGGING! in a public room.  His excuse is that his mother is
starving.  Will you kindly take him to the Hall, and put him in
charge of the gardener, with my strict orders that he is to do a
good afternoon's work at weeding in the shrubbery.  And that the
gardener is to see that he comes every day at nine o'clock in the
morning, and works there till four in the afternoon, till the day
you reopen school, meal-times and Sundays excepted.  I will pay his
mother five shillings a week, and, if he is a good boy, I'll give
him some old clothes.  And if ever you see or hear of his disgracing
himself and his friends by begging again, if you don't thrash him
within an inch of his life, I shall.'  I promise you, the widow
might starve for the want of that five shillings if the young
gentleman could slip out of his bargain.  His face was a study.  But
less so than the schoolmaster's.  The job exactly suited him, and I
suspect he knew the lad of old."

"From what I've heard Swift say, I fancy he sympathizes with your
theories," said the Rector.

"I fear he sympathizes with my temper as well as my theories!"
laughed the Squire.  "As I felt the flush on my own cheek-bone, I
caught the fire in his eye.  But now, my dear sir, you will consent
to some strong measures to prevent the village becoming a mere nest
of lazzaroni?  Let us try the system at any rate.  I propose that we
do not shut up the soup kitchen yet, but charge a small sum for the
soup towards its expenses.  And I want to beg you to write another
of those graphic and persuasive letters, in which you have appealed
to the sympathy of the public with our misfortune."

"But, bless me!" said the Rector, "I thought you were a foe to
assisting the people, even out of their own parson's pocket."

"Well, I taunted the doctor myself with inconsistency, but we do not
propose to make a sixpenny dole of the fund.  You know there are
certain things they can't do, and some help they seem fairly
entitled to receive.  We've made them burn their bedding, in the
interests of the public safety, and it's only fair they should be
helped to replace it.  Then there is a lot of sanitary work which
can only be done by a fund for the purpose; and, if we get the
money, we can employ idlers.  The women will tidy their houses when
they see new blankets, and the sooner the churchyard is made nice,
and that monument of yours erected, and we all get into orderly,
respectable ways again, the better."

"Enough, enough, my dear Ammaby!" cried the Rector; "I put myself in
your hands, and I will see to the public appeal at once; though I
may mention that the credit of those compositions chiefly belongs to
old Swift.  He knows the data minutely, and he delights in the
putting together.  I think he regards it as a species of literary
work.  I hope you hear good news of Lady Louisa and little Amabel?"

"They are quite well, thank you," said the Squire; "they are in town
just now with Lady Craikshaw, who has gone up to consult her London
doctor."

"Well, farewell, Ammaby, for the present.  Tell the doctor I'll give
his plan a trial, and we'll get the place into working order as fast
as we can."

"He will be charmed," said the Squire.  "He says, as we are going on
now, we are breeding two worse pests than the fever,--contentment
under remediable discomfort, and a dislike to work."



CHAPTER XXVIII.

MR. FORD'S CLIENT.--THE HISTORY OF JAN'S FATHER--AMABEL AND BOGY THE
SECOND.

Among the many sounds blended into that one which roared for ever
round Mr. Ford's offices in the city was the cry of the newsboys.

"Horful p'ticklers of the plague in a village in --shire!" they
screamed under the windows.  Not that Mr. Ford heard them.  But in
five minutes the noiseless door opened, and a clerk laid the morning
paper on the table, and withdrew in silence.  Mr.  Ford cut it
leisurely with a large ivory knife, and skimmed the news.  His eye
happened to fall upon the Rector's letter, which, after a short
summary of the history of the fever, pointed out the objects for
which help was immediately required.  There was a postscript.  To
give some idea of the ravages of the epidemic, and as a proof that
the calamity was not exaggerated, a list of some of the worst cases
was given, with names and particulars.  It was gloomy enough.  "Mary
Smith, lost her husband (a laborer) and six children between the
second and the ninth of the month.  George Harness, a blacksmith,
lost his wife and four children.  Master Abel Lake, windmiller of
the Tower Mill, lost all his children, five in number, between the
fifth and the fifteenth of the month.  His wife's health is
completely broken up" -

At this point Mr. Ford dropped the paper, and, unlocking a drawer
beside him, referred to some memoranda, after which he cut out the
Rector's letter with a large pair of office scissors, and enclosed
it in one which he wrote before proceeding to any other business.
He had underlined one name in the doleful list,--ABEL LAKE,
WINDMILLER.

Some hours later the silent clerk ushered in a visitor, one of Mr.
Ford's clients.  He was a gentleman of middle height and middle
age,--the younger half of middle age, though his dark hair was
prematurely gray.  His eyes were black and restless, and his manner
at once haughty and nervous.

"I am very glad to see you, my dear sir," said Mr. Ford, suavely; "I
had just written you a note, the subject of which I can now speak
about."  And, as he spoke, Mr. Ford tore open the letter which lay
beside him, whilst his client was saying, "We are only passing
through town on our way to Scotland.  I shall be here two nights."

"You remember instructing me that it was your wish to economize as
much as possible during the minority of your son?" said Mr. Ford.
His client nodded.

"I think," continued the man of business, "there is a quarterly
payment we have been in the habit of making on your account, which
is now at an end."  And, as he spoke, he pushed the Rector's letter
across the table, with his fingers upon the name ABEL LAKE,
WINDMILLER.  His client always spoke stiffly, which made the effort
with which he now spoke less noticed by the lawyer.  "I should like
to be certain," he said.  "I mean, that there is no exaggeration or
mistake."

"You have never communicated with the man, or given him any chance
of pestering you," said Mr. Ford.  "I should hardly do so now, I
think"

"I certainly kept the power of reopening communication in my own
hands, knowing nothing of the man; but I should be sorry to
discontinue the allowance under a--a mistake of any kind."

Mr. Ford meditated.  It may be said here that he by no means knew
all that the reader knows of Jan's history; but he saw that his
client was anxious not to withhold the money if the child were
alive.

"I think I have it, my dear sir," he said suddenly.  "Allow me to
write, in my own name, to this worthy clergyman.  I must ask you to
subscribe to his fund, in my name, which will form an excuse for the
letter, and I will contrive to ask him if the list of cases has been
printed accurately, and has his sanction.  If there has been any
error, we shall hear of it.  The object of the subscription is--let
me see--is--a monument to those who have died of the fever and" -

But the dark gentleman had started up abruptly.

"Thank you, thank you, Mr. Ford," he said; "your plan is, as usual,
excellent.  Pray oblige me by sending ten guineas in your own name,
and you will let me know if--if there IS any mistake.  I will call
in to-morrow about other matters."

And before Mr. Ford could reply his client was gone.

The peculiar solitude to be found in the crowded heart of London was
grateful to his present mood.  To have been alone with his thoughts
in the country would have been intolerable.  The fields smack of
innocence, and alone with them the past is apt to take the simple
tints of right and wrong in the memory.  But in that seething mass,
which represents ten thousand heartaches and anxieties, doubtful
shifts, and open sins, as bad or worse than a man's own, there is a
silent sympathy and no reproach.  Mr. Ford's client did not lean
back, the tension of his mind was too great.  He sat stiffly, and
gazed vacantly before him, half seeing and half transforming into
other visions whatever lay before the hansom, as it wound its way
through the streets.  Now for a moment a four-wheeled cab, loaded
with schoolboy luggage, occupied the field of view, and idle
memories of his own boyhood flitted over it.  Then, crawling behind
a dray, some strange associations built up the barrels into an old
weatherstained wooden house in Holland, and for a while an intense
realization of past scenes which love had made happy put present
anxieties to sleep.  But they woke again with a horrible pang, as a
grim, hideous funeral car drove slowly past, nodding like a
nightmare.

As the traffic became less dense, and the cab went faster, the man's
thoughts went faster too.  He strove to do what he had not often
tried, to review his life.  He had unconsciously gained the will to
do it, because a reparation which conscience might hitherto have
pressed on him was now impossible, and because the plague that had
desolated Abel Lake's home had swept the skeleton out of his own
cupboard, and he could repent of the past and do his duty in the
future.  His conscience was stronger than his courage.  He had long
wished to repent, though he had not found strength to repair.

On one point he did not delude himself as he looked back over his
life.  He had no sentimental regrets for the careless happiness of
youth.  Is any period of human life so tormented with cares as a
self-indulgent youth?  He had been a slave to expensive habits, to
social traditions, to past follies, ever since he could remember.
He had been in debt, in pocket or in conscience, from his schoolboy
days to this hour.  His tradesmen were paid long since, and, if
death had cancelled what else he owed, how easy virtue would
henceforth be!

It had not been easy at the date of his first marriage.  He was
deeply in debt, and out of favor with his father.  It was on both
accounts that he went abroad for some months.  In Holland he
married.  His wife was Jan's mother, and Jan was their only child.

Her people were of middle rank, leading quiet though cultivated
lives.  Her mother was dead, and she was her old father's only
child.  It would be doing injustice to the kind of love with which
she inspired her husband to dwell much upon her beauty, though it
was of that high type which takes possession of the memory for ever.
She was very intensely, brilliantly fair, so that in a crowd her
face shone out like a star.  Time never dimmed one golden thread in
her hair; and Death, who had done so much for Mr. Ford's client,
could not wash that face from his brain.  It blotted the traffic out
of the streets, and in their place Dutch pastures, whose rich green
levels were unbroken by hedge or wall, stretched flatly to the
horizon.  It bent over a drawing on his knee as he and she sat
sketching together in an old-world orchard, where the trees bore
more moss than fruit.  The din of London was absolutely unheard by
Mr. Ford's client, but he heard her voice, saying, "You must learn
to paint cattle, if you mean to make any thing of Dutch scenery.
And also, where the earth gives so little variety, one must study
the sky.  We have no mountains, but we have clouds."  It was in the
orchard, under the apple-tree, across the sketch-book, that they had
plighted their troth--ten years ago.

They were married.  Had he ever denied himself a single
gratification, because it would add another knot to the tangle of
his career?  He had pacified creditors by incurring fresh debts, and
had evaded catastrophes by involving himself in new complications
all his life.  His marriage was accomplished at the expense of a
train of falsehoods, but his father-in-law was an unworldly old man,
not difficult to deceive.  He spent most of the next ten months in
Holland, and, apart from his anxieties, it was the purest, happiest
time he had ever known.  Then his father recalled him peremptorily
to England.

When Mr. Ford's client obeyed his father's summons, the climax of
his difficulties seemed at hand.  The old man was anxious for a
reconciliation, but resolved that his son should "settle in life;"
and he had found a wife for him, the daughter of a Scotch nobleman,
young, handsome, and with a good fortune.  He gave him a fortnight
for consideration.  If he complied, the old man promised to pay his
debts, to make him a liberal allowance, and to be in every way
indulgent.  If he thwarted his plans, he threatened to allow him
nothing during his lifetime, and to leave him nothing that he could
avoid bequeathing at his death.

It was at this juncture that Jan's mother followed her husband to
England.  Her anxieties were not silenced by excuses which satisfied
her father.  The crisis could hardly have been worse.  Mr. Ford's
client felt that confession was now inevitable; and that he could
confess more easily by letter when he reached London.  But before
the letter was written, his wife died.

Weak men, harassed by personal anxieties, become hard in proportion
to their selfish fears.  It is like the cruelty that comes of
terror.  He had loved his wife; but he was terribly pressed, and
there came a sense of relief even with the bitterness of the
knowledge that he was free.  He took the body to Holland, to be
buried under the shadow of the little wooden church where they were
married; and to the desolate old father he promised to bring his
grandson--Jan.  But just after the death of an old nurse, in whose
care he had placed his child, another crisis came to Mr. Ford's
client.  On the same day he got letters from his father and from his
father-in-law.  From the first, to press his instant return home;
from the second, to say that, if he could not at once bring Jan, the
old man would make the effort of a voyage to England to fetch him.
Jan's father almost hated him.  That the child should have lived
when the beloved mother died was in itself an offence.  But that
that freedom, and peace, and prosperity, which were so dearly
purchased by her death, should be risked afresh by him, was
irritating to a degree.  He was frantic.  It was impossible to fail
that very peremptory old gentleman, his father.  It was out of the
question to allow his father-in-law to come to England.  He could
not throw away all his prospects.  And the more he thought of it,
the more certain it seemed that Jan's existence would for ever tie
him to Holland; that for his grandson's sake the old man would
investigate his affairs, and that the truth would come out sooner or
later.  The very devil suggested to him that if the child had died
with its mother he would have been quite free, and intercourse with
Holland would have died away naturally.  He wished to forget.  To a
nature of his type, when even such a love as he had been privileged
to enjoy had become a memory involving pain, it was instinctively
evaded like any other unpleasant thing.  He resolved, at last, to
let nothing stand between him and reconciliation with his father.
Once more he must desperately mortgage the future for present
emergencies.  He wrote to the old father-in-law to say that the
child was dead.  He excused this to himself on the ground of Jan's
welfare.  If the truth became fully known, and his father threw him
off, he would be a poor embarrassed man, and could do little for his
child.  But with his father's fortune, and, perhaps, the Scotch
lady's fortune, it would be in his power to give Jan a brilliant
future, EVEN IF he never fully acknowledged him.  As yet he hardly
recognized such an unnatural possibility.  He said to himself, that
when he was free, all would be well, and the Dutch grandfather would
forgive the lie in the joy of discovering that Jan was alive, and
would be so well provided for.

Mr. Ford's client was reconciled to his father.  He married Lady
Adelaide, and announced the marriage to his father-in-law.  After
which, his intercourse with Holland died out.

It was a curious result of a marriage so made that it was a very
happy one.  Still more curious was the likeness, both physical and
mental, between the second wife and the first.  Lady Adelaide was
half Scotch and half English, a blonde of the most brilliant type,
and of an intellectual order of beauty.  But fair women are common
enough.  It was stranger still that the best affections of two women
of so high a moral and intellectual standard should have been
devoted to the same and to such a husband.  Not quite in vain.
Indeed, but for that grievous sin towards his eldest son, Mr. Ford's
client would probably have become an utterly different man.  But
there is no rising far in the moral atmosphere with a wilful,
unrepented sin as a clog.  It was a miserable result of the weakness
of his character that he could not see that the very nobleness of
Lady Adelaide's should have encouraged him to confess to her what he
dared not trust to his father's imperious, petulant affection.  But
he was afraid of her.  It had been the same with his first wife.  He
had dreaded that she should discover his falsehoods far more than he
had feared his father-in-law.  And years of happy companionship made
it even less tolerable to him to think of lowering himself in Lady
Adelaide's regard.

But there was a far more overwhelming consideration which had been
gathering strength for eight years between him and the idea of
recognizing Jan as his eldest son, and his heir.  He had another
son, Lady Adelaide's only child.  If he had hesitated when the boy
was only a baby to tell her that her darling was not his only son,
it was less and less easy to him to think of bringing Jan,--of whom
he knew nothing--from the rough life of the mill to supplant Lady
Adelaide's child, when the boy grew more charming as every year went
by.  Clever, sweet-tempered, of aristocratic appearance, idolized by
the relatives of both his parents, he seemed made by Providence to
do credit to the position to which he was believed to have been
born.

Mr. Ford's client had almost made the resolve against which that
fair face that was not Lady Adelaide's for ever rose up in judgment:
he was just deciding to put Jan to school, and to give up all idea
of taking him home, when death seemed once more to have solved his
difficulties.  An unwonted ease came into his heart.  Surely Heaven,
knowing how sincerely he wished to be good, was making goodness easy
to him,--was permitting him to settle with his conscience on cheaper
terms than those of repentance and restitution.  (And indeed, if
amendment, of the weak as well as of the strong, be GOD'S great
purpose for us, who shall say that the ruggedness of the narrow road
is not often smoothed for stumbling feet?)  The fever seemed quite
providential, and Mr. Ford's client felt quite pious about it.  He
was conscious of no mockery in dwelling to himself on the thought
that Jan was "better off" in Paradise with his mother.  And he
himself was safe--for the first time since he could remember,--free
at last to become worthier, with no black shadow at his heels.  Very
touching was his resolve that he would be a better father to his son
than his own father had been to him.  If be could not train him in
high principles and self-restraint, he would at least be indulgent
to the consequences of his own indulgence, and never drive him to
those fearful straits.  "But he'll be a very different young man
from what I was," was his final thought.  "Thanks to his good
mother."

His mind was full of Lady Adelaide's goodness as he entered his
house, and she met him in the hall.

"Ah, Edward!" she cried, "I am so glad you've come home.  I want you
to see that quaint child I was telling you about."

"I don't remember, my dear," said Mr. Ford's client.

"You're looking very tired," said Lady Adelaide, gently; "but about
the child.  It is Lady Louisa Ammaby's little girl.  You know I met
her just before we left Brighton.  I only saw the child once, but it
is the quaintest, most original little being!  So unlike its mother!
She and her mother are in town, and they were going out to luncheon
to-day I found, so I asked the child here to dine with D'Arcy.  Her
bonne is taking off her things, and I must go and bring her down."

As Lady Adelaide went out, her son came in, and rushed up to his
father.  If Mr. Ford's client had failed in natural affection for
one son, his love for the other had a double intensity.  He put his
arm tenderly round him, whilst the boy told some long childish
story, which was not finished when Lady Adelaide returned, leading
Amabel by the hand.  Amabel was a good deal taller.  Her large feet
were adorned with ornamental thread socks, and leathern shoes
buttoned round the ankle.  Her hair was cropped, because Lady
Craikshaw said this made it grow.  She wore a big pinafore by the
same authority, in spite of which she carried herself with an
admirable dignity.  The same candor, good sense, and resolution
shone from her clear eyes and fat cheeks as of old.  Mr. Ford's
client was alarming to children, but Amabel shook hands courageously
with him.

She was accustomed to exercise courage in her behavior.  From her
earliest days a standard of manners had been expected of her beyond
her age.  It was a consequence of her growth.  "You're quite a big
girl now," was a nursery reproach addressed to her at least two
years before the time, and she tried valiantly to live up to her
inches.

But when Amabel saw D'Arcy, she started and stopped short.  "Won't
you shake hands with my boy, Amabel?" said Lady Adelaide.  "Oh, you
must make friends with him, and he'll give you a ride on the
rocking-horse after dinner.  Surely such a big girl can't be shy?"

Goaded by the old reproach, Amabel made an effort, and, advancing by
herself, held out her hand, and said, "How do you do, Bogy?"

D'Arcy's black eyes twinkled with merriment.  "How do you do, Mother
Bunch?" said he.

"My DEAR D'Arcy!" said Lady Adelaide, reproachfully.

"Mamma, I am not rude.  I am only joking.  She calls me Bogy, so I
call her Mother Bunch."

"But I'm NOT Mother Bunch," said Amabel.

"And I'm not Bogy," retorted D'Arcy.

"Yes, you are," said Amabel.  "Only you had very old clothes on in
the wood."

Lady Craikshaw had cruelly warned Lady Adelaide that Amabel
sometimes told stories, and, thinking that the child was romancing,
Lady Adelaide tried to change the subject.  But D'Arcy cried, "Oh,
do let her talk, mamma.  I do so like her.  She is such fun!"

"You oughtn't to laugh at me," said poor Amabel, as D'Arcy took her
into the dining-room, "I gave you my paint-box."

The boy's stare of amazement awoke a doubt in Amabel's mind of his
identity with the Bogy of the woods.  Between constantly peeping at
him, and her anxiety to conduct herself conformably to her size in
the etiquette of the dinner-table, she did not eat much.  When
dinner was over, and D'Arcy led her away to the rocking horse, he
asked, "Do you still think I'm Bogy?"

"N--no," said Amabel, "I think perhaps you're not.  But you're very
like him, though you talk differently.  Do you make pictures?"

D'Arcy shook his head.

"Not even of leaves?" said Amabel.

When she was going away, D'Arcy asked, "Which do you like best, me
or Bogy?"

Amabel pondered.  "I like you very much.  You made the rocking-horse
go so fast; but I liked Bogy.  He carried me all up the hill, and he
picked up my moss.  I wasn't afraid of him.  I gave him a kiss."

"Well, give me a kiss," said D'Arcy.  But there was a tone of
raillery in his voice which put Amabel on her dignity, and she shook
her head, and began to go down the steps of the house, one leg at a
time.

"If I'm Bogy, you know, you HAVE kissed me ONCE," shouted D'Arcy.
But Amabel's wits were as well developed as her feet.

"Once is enough for bogies," said she, and went sturdily away.



CHAPTER XXIX.

JAN FULFILS ABEL'S CHARGE.--SON OF THE MILL.--THE LARGE-MOUTHED
WOMAN.

By the time Jan went back to the windmill he was quite well.

"Ye'll be fit for the walk by I open school," said Master Swift.

Jan promised himself that he would redouble his pains in class, from
gratitude to the good schoolmaster.  But it was not to be.

The day before the school opened, Jan came to the cottage.  "Master
Swift," said he, "I be come to tell ye that I be afraid I can't come
to school."

"And how's that?" said Master Swift.

"Well, Master Swift, I do think I be wanted at home.  My father's
not got Abel now; but it's my mother that mostly wants me.  I be
bothered about mother, somehow," said Jan, with an anxious look.
"She do forget things so, and be so queer.  She left the beer-tap
running yesterday, and near two gallons of ale ran out; and this
morning she put the kettle on, and no water in it.  And she do cry
terrible," Jan added, breaking down himself.  "But Abel says to me
the day he was took ill, 'Janny,' he says, 'look to mother.'  And so
I will."

"You're a good lad, Jan," said the schoolmaster.  "Sit ye down and
get your tea, and I'll come back with ye to the mill.  A bit of
company does folk good that's beside themselves with fretting."

But the windmiller's wife was beyond such simple cure.  The
overtasked brain was giving way, and though there were from time to
time such capricious changes in her condition as led Jan to hope she
was better, she became more and more imbecile to the end of her
life.

To say that he was a devoted son is to give a very vague idea of his
life at this time to those for whom filial duty takes the shape of
compliance rather than of action, or to those who have no experience
of domestic attendance on the infirm both of body and of mind.

It was not in moments of tender feeling, or at his prayers, or by
Abel's grave, that Jan recalled his foster-brother's dying charge;
but as he emptied slops, cleaned grates, or fastened Mrs. Lake's
black dress behind.  Nor did gratitude flatter his zeal.  "Boys do
be so ackered with hooks and eyes," the poor woman grumbled in her
fretfulness, and then she sat down to bemoan herself that she had
not a daughter left.  She had got a trick of stopping short half way
through her dressing, and giving herself up to tears, which led to
Jan's assisting at her toilette.  He was soon expert enough with
hooks and eyes, the more tedious matter was getting up her courage,
which invariably failed her at the stage of her linsey-woolsey
petticoat.  But when Jan had hooked her up, and tied her apron on,
and put a little shawl about her shoulders, and got her close-
fitting cap set straight,--a matter about as easy as putting another
man's spectacles on his nose,--and seated her by the fire, the worst
was over.  Mrs. Lake always cheered up after breakfast, and Jan
always to the very end hoped that this was the beginning of her
getting better.

Even after a niece of the windmiller's came to live at the mill, and
to wait on Mrs. Lake, the poor woman was never really content
without Jan.  As time went on, she wept less, but her faculties
became more clouded.  She had some brighter hours, and the company
of the schoolmaster gave her pleasure, and seemed to do her good.
When the Rector visited her, his very sympathy made him delicate
about dwelling on her bereavement.  When the poor woman sobbed, he
changed the subject in haste, and his condolences were of a very
general character.  But Master Swift had no such scruples; and as he
sat by her chair, with a kindly hand on hers, he spoke both plainly
and loudly.  The latter because Mrs. Lake's hearing had become dull.
Nor did he cease to speak because tears dropped perpetually from the
eyes which were turned to him, and which seemed day by day to lose
color from the pupils, and to grow redder round the lids from
weeping.

"Them that sleep in Jesus shall GOD bring with Him.  Ah! Mrs. Lake,
ma'am, they're grand words for you and me.  The Lord has dealt
hardly with us, but there are folk that lose their children when
it's worse.  There's many a Christian parent has lived to see them
grow up to wickedness, and has lost 'em in their sins, and has had
to carry THAT weight in his heart besides their loss, that the
Lord's counsels for them were dark to him.  But for yours and mine,
woman, that have gone home in their innocence, what have we to say
to the Almighty, except to pray of Him to make us fitter to take
them when He brings them back?"

Through the cloud that hung over the poor woman's spirit, Master
Swift's plain consolations made their way.  The ruling thought of
his mind became the one idea to which her unhinged intellect clung,-
-the second coming of the Lord.  For this she watched--not merely in
the sense of a readiness for judgment, but--out of the upper windows
of the windmill, from which could be seen a vast extent of that
heaven in which the sign of the Son of Man should be, before He
came.

Sky-gazing was an old habit with Jan, and his active imagination was
not slow to follow his foster-mother's fancies.  The niece did all
the house-work, for the freakish state of Mrs. Lake's memory made
her help too uncertain to be trusted to.  But, with a restlessness
which was perhaps part of her disease, she wandered from story to
story of the windmill, guided by Jan, and the windmiller made no
objection.

The country folk who brought grist to the mill would strain their
ears with a sense of awe to catch Mrs. Lake's mutterings as she
glided hither and thither with that mysterious shadow on her spirit,
and the miller himself paid a respect to her intellect now it was
shattered which he had not paid whilst it was whole.  Indeed he was
very kind to her, and every Sunday he led her tenderly to church,
where the music soothed her as it soothed Saul of old.  As the brain
failed, she became happier, but her sorrow was like a pain numbed by
narcotics; it awoke again from time to time.  She would fancy the
children were with her, and then suddenly arouse to the fact that
they were not, and moan that she had lost all.

"Thee've got one left, mother dear," Jan would cry, and his caresses
comforted her.  But at times she was troubled by an imperfect
remembrance of Jan's history, and, with some echo of her old
reluctance to adopt him, she would wail that she "didn't want a
stranger child."  It cut Jan to the heart.  Ever since he had known
that he was not a miller's son, he had protested against the
knowledge.  He loved the windmill and the windmiller's trade.  He
loved his foster-parents, and desired no others.  He had a miller's
thumb, and he flattened it with double pains now that his right to
it was disputed.  He would press Mrs. Lake's thin fingers against it
in proof that he belonged to her, and the simple wile was
successful, for she would smile and say, "Ay, ay, love!  Thee's a
miller's boy, for thee've got the miller's thumb."

Two or three causes combined to strengthen Jan's love for his home.
His revolt from the fact that he was no windmiller born gave the
energy of contradiction.  Then to fulfil Abel's behests, and to take
his place in the mill, was now Jan's chief ambition.  And whence
could be seen such glorious views as from the windows of a windmill?

Master Lake was very glad of his help.  The quarterly payment had
now been due for some weeks, but, in telling the schoolmaster, he
only said, "I'd be as well pleased if they forgot un altogether,
now.  I don't want him took away, no time.  And now I've lost Abel,
Jan'll have the mill after me.  He's a good son is Jan."

And, as he echoed Jan's praises, it never dawned on Master Swift
that he was the cause of the allowance having stopped.  Jan was
jealous of his title as Master Lake's son, but the schoolmaster
dwelt much in his own mind on the fact that Jan was no real child of
the district; partly in his ambition for him, and partly out of a
dim hope that he would himself be some day allowed to adopt him.  In
stating that the windmiller had lost all his children by the fever,
he had stated the bare fact in all good faith; and as neither he nor
the Rector guessed the real drift of Mr. Ford's letter, the mistake
was never corrected.

Jan was useful in the mill.  He swept the round-house, coupled the
sacks, received grist from the grist-bringers, and took payment for
the grinding in money or in kind, according to custom.  The old
women who toddled in with their bags of gleaned corn looked very
kindly on him, and would say, "Thee be a good bwoy, sartinly, Jan,
and the Lard'll reward thee."  If the windmiller came towards one of
these dames, she would say, "Aal right, Master Lake, I be in no
manners of hurry, Jan'll do for me."  And, when Jan came, his
business-like method justified her confidence.  "Good day, mother,"
he would say.  "Will ye pay, or toll it?"  "Bless ye, dear love, how
should I pay?" the old woman would reply.  "I'll toll it, Jan, and
thank ye kindly."  On which Jan would dip the wooden bowl or
tolling-dish into the sack, and the corn it brought up was the
established rate of payment for grinding the rest.

But, though he constantly assured the schoolmaster that he meant to
be a windmiller, Jan did not neglect his special gift.  He got up
with many a dawn to paint the sunrise.  In still summer afternoons,
when the mill-sails were idle, and Mrs. Lake was dozing from the
heat, he betook himself to the water-meads to sketch.  In the mill
itself he made countless studies.  Not only of the ever-changing
heavens, and of the monotonous sweeps of the great plains, whose
aspect is more changeable than one might think, but studies on the
various floors of the mill, and in the roundhouse, where old meal-
bins and swollen sacks looked picturesque in the dim light falling
from above, in which also the circular stones, the shaft, and the
very hoppers, became effective subjects for the Cumberland lead-
pencils.

Towards the end of the summer following the fever, Mrs. Lake failed
rapidly.  She sat out of doors most of the day, the miller moving
her chair from one side to another of the mill to get the shade.
Master Swift brought her big nosegays from his garden, at which she
would smell for hours, as if the scent soothed her.  She spoke very
little, but she watched the sky constantly.

One evening there was a gorgeous sunset.  In all its splendor, with
a countless multitude of little clouds about it bright with its
light, the glory of the sun seemed little less than that of the Lord
Himself, coming with ten thousand of His saints, and the poor woman
gazed as if her withered, wistful eyes could see her children among
the radiant host.  "I do think the Lord be coming to-night, Master
Swift," she said.  "And He'll bring them with Him."

She gazed on after all the glory had faded, and lingered till it
grew dark, and the schoolmaster had gone home.  It was not till her
dress was quite wet with dew that Jan insisted upon her going
indoors.

They were coming round the mill in the dusk, when a cry broke from
Mrs. Lake's lips; which was only an echo of a louder one from Jan.
A woman creeping round the mill in the opposite direction had just
craned her neck forward so that Jan and his foster-mother saw her
face for an instant before it disappeared.  Why Jan was so
terrified, he would have been puzzled to say, for the woman was not
hideous, though she had an ugly mouth.  But he was terrified, and
none the less so from a conviction that she was looking intently and
intentionally at him.  When he got his foster-mother indoors, the
miller was disposed to think the affair was a fancy; but, as if the
shock had given a spur to her feeble senses, Mrs. Lake said in a
loud clear voice, "Maester, it be the woman that brought our Jan
hither!"

But when the miller ran out, no one was to be seen.



CHAPTER XXX.

JAN'S PROSPECTS AND MASTER SWIFT'S PLANS.--TEA AND MILTON.--NEW
PARENTS.--PARTING WITH RUFUS.--JAN IS KIDNAPPED.

This shock seemed to give a last jar to the frail state of Mrs.
Lake's health, and the sleep into which she fell that night passed
into a state of insensibility in which her sorely tried spirit was
released without pain.

It was said that the windmiller looked twice his age from trouble.
But his wan appearance may have been partly due to the inroads of a
lung disease, which comes to millers from constantly inhaling the
flour-dust.  His cheeks grew hollow, and his wasted hands displayed
the windmiller's coat of arms {2} with painful distinctness.  The
schoolmaster spent most of his evenings at the mill; but sometimes
Jan went to tea with him, and by Master Lake's own desire he went to
school once more.

Master Swift thought none the less of Jan's prospects that it was
useless to discuss them with Master Lake.  All his plans were
founded on the belief that he himself would live to train the boy to
be a windmiller, whilst Master Swift's had reference to the
conviction that "miller's consumption" would deprive Jan of his
foster-father long before he was old enough to succeed him.  And had
the miller made his will?  Master Swift made his, and left his few
savings to Jan.  He could not help hoping for some turn of Fortune's
wheel which should give the lad to him for his own.

Jan was not likely to lack friends.  The Squire had heard with
amazement that Master Chuter's new sign was the work of a child, and
he offered to place him under proper instruction to be trained as an
artist.  But, at the time that this offer came, Jan was waiting on
his foster mother, and he refused to betray Abel's trust.  The
Rector also wished to provide for him, but he was even more easily
convinced that Jan's present duty lay at home.  Master Swift too
urged this in all good faith, but his personal love for Jan, and the
dread of parting with him, had an influence of which he was hardly
conscious.

One evening, a few weeks after Mrs. Lake's death, Jan had tea,
followed by poetry, with the schoolmaster.  Master Swift often
recited at the windmill.  The miller liked to hear hymns his wife
had liked, and a few patriotic and romantic verses; but he yawned
over Milton, and fell asleep under Keats, so the schoolmaster
reserved his favorites for Jan's ear alone.

When tea was over, Jan sat on the rush-bottomed chair, with his feet
on Rufus, on that side of the hearth which faced the window, and on
the other side sat Master Swift, with the mongrel lying by him, and
he spouted from Milton.  Jan, familiar with many a sunrise, listened
with parted lips of pleasure, as the old man trolled forth, -

     "Right against the eastern gate,
      Where the great sun begins his state,
      Robed in flames and amber light,"

and with even more sympathy to the latter part of 'Il Penseroso;'
and, as when this was ended he begged for yet more, the old man
began 'Lycidas.'  He knew most of it by heart, and waving his hand,
with his eyes fixed expressively on Jan, he cried, -

     "Fame is the spur that the clear spirit doth raise
      (That last infirmity of noble minds)
      To scorn delights, and live laborious days."

And tears filled his eyes, and made his voice husky, as he went on,
-

     "But the fair guerdon when we hope to find,
      And think to burst out into sudden blaze,
      Comes the blind Fury with the abhorred shears" -

Master Swift stopped suddenly.  Rufus was growling, and Jan was
white and rigid, with his eyes fixed on the window.

As in most North countrymen, there was in the schoolmaster an
ineradicable touch of superstition.  He cursed the "unlucky" poem,
and flinging the book from him ran to his favorite.  As soon as Jan
could speak, he gasped, "The woman that brought me to the mill!"
But when Master Swift went to search the garden he could find no
one.

Remembering the former alarm, and that no one was to be seen then,
Master Swift came to the conclusion that in each case it was a
delusion.

"Ye're a dear good lad, Jan," said he, "but ye've fagged yourself
out.  Take the dog with ye to-morrow for company, and your sketch-
book, and amuse yourself.  I'll not expect ye at school.  And get
away to your bed now.  I told Master Lake I shouldn't let ye away
to-night."

Jan went to bed, and next morning was up with the lark, and with
Rufus at his heels went off to a distant place, where from a mound,
where a smaller road crossed the highway to London, there was a view
which he wished to sketch under an early light.  As he drew near, he
saw a small cart, at one side of which the horse was feeding, and at
the foot of the mound sat a woman with a pedler's basket.

When Jan recognized her, it was too late to run away.  And whither
could he have run?  The four white roads gleamed unsheltered over
the plains; there was no place to hide in, and not a soul in sight.

When the large-mouthed woman seized Jan in her arms, and kissing him
cried aloud, "Here he is at last!  My child, my long lost child!"
the despair which sank into the poor boy's heart made him
speechless.  Was it possible that this woman was his mother?  His
foster-mother's words tolled like a knell in his ears,--"The woman
that brought our Jan hither."  At the sound of Sal's voice the
hunchback appeared from behind the cart, and his wife dragged Jan
towards him, crying, "Here's our dear son! our pretty, clever little
son."

"I bean't your son!" cried poor Jan, desperately.  "My mother's
dead."  For a moment the Cheap Jack's wife seemed staggered; but
unluckily Jan added, "She died last month," and it was evident that
he knew nothing of his real history.

"Oh, them mill people, them false wretches!" screamed the woman.
"Have I been a paying 'em for my precious child, all this time, for
'em to teach him to deny his own mother!  The brutes!"

Jan's face and eyes blazed with passion.  "How dare you abuse my
good father and mother!" he cried.  "YOU be the wretch, and" -

But at this, and the same moment, the Cheap Jack seized Jan
furiously by the throat, and Rufus sprang upon the hunchback.  The
hunchback was in the greater danger, from which only his wife's
presence of mind saved him.  She shrieked to him to let Jan go, that
he might call off the dog, which the vindictive little Cheap Jack
was loath to do.  And when Jan had got Rufus off, and was holding
him by the collar, the hunchback seized a hatchet with which he had
been cutting stakes, and rushed upon the dog.  Jan put himself
between them, crying incoherently, "Let him alone!  He's not mine--
he won't hurt you--I'll send him home--I'll let un loose if ye
don't;" and Sal held back her husband, and said, "If you'll behave
civil, Jan, my dear, and as you should do to your poor mother, you
may send the dog home.  And well for him too, for John's a man
that's not very particular what he does to them that puts him out in
a place like this where there's no one to tell tales.  He'd chop him
limb from limb, as soon as not."

Jan shuddered.  There was no choice but to save Rufus.  He clung
round the curly brown neck in one agonized embrace, and then
steadied his voice for an authoritative, "Home, Rufus!" as he let
him go.  Rufus hesitated, and looked dangerously at the hunchback,
who lifted the hatchet.  Jan shouted angrily, "Home, Rufus!" and
Rufus obeyed.  Twenty times, as his familiar figure, with the plumy
tail curled sideways, lessened along the road, was Jan tempted to
call him back to his destruction; but he did not.  Only when the
brown speck was fairly lost to sight, his utter friendlessness
overwhelmed him, and falling on his knees he besought the woman with
tears to let him go,--at least to tell Master Lake all about it.

The hunchback began to reply with angry oaths, but Sal made signs to
him to be silent, and said, "It comes very hard to me, Jan, to be
treated this way by my only son, but, if you'll be a good boy, I'm
willing to oblige you, and we'll drive round by the mill to let you
see your friends, though it's out of the way too."

Jan was profuse of thanks, and by the woman's desire he sat down to
share their breakfast.  The hunchback examined his sketch-book, and,
as he laid it down again, he asked, "Did you ever make picters on
stone, eh?"

"Before I could get paper, I did, sir," said Jan.

"But could you now?  Could you make 'em on a flat stone, like a
paving-stone?"

"If I'd any thing to draw with, I could," said Jan.  "I could draw
on any thing, if I had something in my hand to draw with."

The Cheap Jack's face became brighter, and in a mollified tone he
said to his wife, "He's a prime card for such a young un.  It's a
rum thing, too!  A man I knowed was grand at screeving, but he said
himself he was nowheres on paper.  He made fifteen to eighteen
shillin' a week on a average," the hunchback continued.  "I've
knowed him take two pound."

"Did you ever draw fish, my dear?" he inquired.

"No, sir," said Jan.  "But I've drawn pigs and dogs, and I be mostly
able to draw any thing I sees, I think."

The Cheap Jack whistled.  "Profiles pays well," he murmured; "but
the tip is the Young Prodigy."

"We're so pleased to see what a clever boy you are, Jan," said Sal;
"that's all, my dear.  Put the bridle on the horse, John, for we've
got to go round by the mill."

Whilst the Cheap Jack obeyed her, Sal poked in the cart, from which
she returned with three tumblers on a plate.  She gave one to her
husband, took one herself, and gave the third to Jan.

"Here's to your health, love," said she; "drink to mine, Jan, and
I'll be a good mother to you."  Jan tasted, and put his glass down
again, choking.  "It's so strong!" he said.

The Cheap Jack looked furious.  "Nice manners they've taught this
brat of yours!" he cried to Sal.  "Do ye think I'm going to take my
'oss a mile out of the road to take him to see his friends, when he
won't so much as drink our good healths?"

"Oh! I will, indeed I will, sir," cried Jan.  He had taken a good
deal of medicine during his illness, and he had learned the art of
gulping.  He emptied the little tumbler into his mouth, and
swallowed the contents at a gulp.

They choked him, but that was nothing.  Then he felt as if something
seized him in the inside of every limb.  After he lost the power of
moving, he could hear, and he heard the Cheap Jack say, "I'd go in
for the Young Prodigy; genteel from the first; only, if we goes
among the nobs, he may be recognized.  He's a rum-looking beggar."

"If you don't go a drinking every penny he earns," said Sal,
pointedly, "we'll soon get enough in a common line to take us to
Ameriky, and he'll be safe enough there."  On this Jan thought that
he made a most desperate struggle and remonstrance.  But in reality
his lips never moved from their rigidity, and he only rolled his
head upon his shoulder.  After which he remembered no more.



CHAPTER XXXI.

SCREEVING.--AN OLD SONG.--MR. FORD'S CLIENT.--THE PENNY GAFF.--JAN
RUNS AWAY.

There was a large crowd, but large crowds gather quickly in London
from small causes.  It was in an out-of-the-way spot too, and the
police had not yet tried to disperse it.

The crowd was gathered round a street-artist who was "screeving," or
drawing pictures on the pavement in colored chalks.  A good many men
have followed the trade in London with some success, but this artist
was a wan, meagre-looking child.  It was Jan.  He drew with
extraordinary rapidity; not with the rapidity of slovenliness, but
with the rapidity of a genius in the choice of what Ruskin calls
"fateful lines."  At his back stood the hunchback, who "pattered" in
description of the drawings as glibly as he used to "puff" his own
wares as a Cheap Jack.

"Cats on the roof of a 'ouse.  Look at 'em, ladies and gentlemen;
and from their harched backs to their tails and whiskers, and the
moon a-shining in the sky, you'll say they're as natteral as life.
Bo-serve the fierceness in the eye of that black Tom.  The one
that's a-coming round the chimney-pot is a Sandy; yellow ochre in
the body, and the markings in red.  There isn't a harpist living
could do 'em better, though I says it that's the lad's father."

The cats were very popular, and so were the Prize Pig, Playful
Porkers, Sow and her Little Ones, as exhibited by the Cheap Jack.
But the prime favorite was "The Faithful Friend," consisting of
sketches of Rufus in various attitudes, including a last sleep on
the grave of a supposititious master, which Jan drew with a heart
that ached as if it must break.

It was growing dark, but the exhibition had been so successful that
day, and the crowd was still so large, that the hunchback was loath
to desist.  At a sign from him, Jan put his colored chalks into a
little pouch in front of him, and drew in powerful chiaroscuro with
soft black chalk and whitening.  These sketches were visible for
some time, and the interest of the crowd did not abate.

Suddenly a flush came over Jan's wan cheeks.  A baker who had paused
for a moment to look, and then passed on, was singing as he went,
and the song and the man's accent were both familiar to Jan.

     "The swallow twitters on the barn,
      The rook is cawing on the tree,
      And in the wood the ring-dove coos" -

"What's your name, boy?"

The peremptory tone of the question turned Jan's attention from the
song, which died away down the street, and looking up he met a pair
of eyes as black as his own, and Mr. Ford's client repeated his
question.  On seeing that a "swell" had paused to look, the Cheap
Jack hurried to Jan's side, and was in time to answer.

"John Smith's his name, sir.  He's slow of speech, my lord, though
very quick with his pencil.  There's not many artists can beat him,
though I says it that shouldn't, being his father."

"YOU his father?" said the gentleman.  "He is not much like you."

"He favours his mother more, my lord," said the Cheap Jack; "and
that's where he gets his talents too."

"No one ever thought he got 'em from you, old hump!" said one of the
spectators, and there was a roar of laughter from the bystanders.

Mr. Ford's client still lingered, though the staring and pushing of
the rude crowd were annoying to him.

"Do you really belong to this man?" he asked of Jan, and Jan
replied, trembling, "Yes, sir."

"Your son doesn't look as if you treated him very well," said the
gentleman, turning to the Cheap Jack.  "Take that, and give him a
good supper this evening.  He deserves it."

As the Cheap Jack stooped for the half crown thrown to him, Mr.
Ford's client gave Jan some pence, saying, "You can keep these
yourself."  Jan's face, with a look of gratitude upon it, seemed to
startle him afresh, but it was getting dark, and the crowd was
closing round him.  Jan had just entertained a wild thought of
asking his protection, when he was gone.

What the strange gentleman had said about his unlikeness to the
Cheap Jack, and also the thoughts awakened by hearing the old song,
gave new energy to a resolve to which Jan had previously come.  He
had resolved to run away.

Since he awoke from the stupor of the draught which Sal had given
him at the cross-roads, and found himself utterly in the power of
the unscrupulous couple who pretended to be his parents, his life
had been miserable enough.  They had never intended to take him back
to the mill, and, since they came to London and he was quite at
their mercy, they had made no pretence of kindness.  That they kept
him constantly at work could hardly be counted an evil, for his
working hours were the only ones with happiness in them, except when
he dreamed of home.  Not the cold pavement chilling him through his
ragged clothes, not the strange staring and jesting of the rough
crowds, not even the hideous sense of the hunchback's vigilant
oversight of him, could destroy his pleasure in the sense of the
daily increasing powers of his fingers, in which genius seemed to
tremble to create.  In the few weeks of his apprenticeship to
screeving, Jan had improved more quickly than he might have done
under such teaching as the Squire had been willing to procure for
the village genius.  At the peril of floggings from the Cheap Jack,
too many of which had already scarred his thin shoulders, he
ransacked his brains for telling subjects, and forced from his
memory the lines which told most, and told most quickly, of the
pathetic look on Rufus's face, the anger, pleasure, or playfulness
of the mill cats.  Perhaps none of us know what might be forced,
against our natural indolence, from the fallow ground of our
capabilities in many lines.  The spirit of a popular subject in the
fewest possible strokes was what Jan had to aim at for his daily
bread, under peril of bodily harm hour after hour, for day after
day, and his hand gained a cunning it might never otherwise have
learned, and could never unlearn now.

In other respects, his learning was altogether of evil.  Perhaps
because they wished to reconcile him to his life, perhaps because
his innocent face and uncorrupted character were an annoyance and
reproach to the wicked couple, they encouraged Jan to associate with
the boys of their own and the neighboring courts.

Many people are sorry to believe that there are a great many wicked
and depraved grown-up people in all large towns, whose habits of
vice are so firm, and whose moral natures are so loose, that their
reformation is practically almost hopeless.  But much fewer people
realize the fact that thousands of little children are actively,
hideously vicious and degraded.  And yet it is better that this
should be remembered than that, since, though it is more painful, it
is more hopeful.  It is hard to reform vicious children, but it is
easier than to reform vicious men and women.

Little boys and little girls of eight or nine or ten years old, who
are also drunkards, sweaters, thieves, gamblers, liars, and vicious,
made Jan a laughing-stock, because of his simple childlike ways.
They called him "green;" but, when he made friends with them by
drawing pictures for them, they tried to teach him their own
terrible lore.  Once the Cheap Jack gave Jan a penny to go with some
other boys to a penny theatre, or "gaff."  The depravity of the
entertainment was a light matter to the depravity of the children by
whom the place was crowded, and who had not so much lost as never
found shame.  Jan was standing amongst them, when he caught sight of
a boy with a white head leaning over the gallery, whose face had a
curious accidental likeness to Abel's.  The expression was quite
different, for this one was partly imbecile, but there was just
likeness enough to recall the past with an unutterable pang.  What
would Abel have said to see him there?  Jan could not breathe in the
place.  The others were engaged, and he fought his way out.

What he had heard and seen rang in his ears and danced before his
eyes after he crept to bed, as the dawn broke over the streets.  But
as if Abel himself had watched by his bedside as he used to do, and
kept evil visions away, it did not trouble his dreams.  He dreamed
of the windmill, and of his foster-mother; of the little wood, and
of Master Swift and Rufus.

After that night Jan had resolved that, whether Sal were his mother
or not, he would run away.  In the strength of his foster-brother's
pious memory he would escape from this evil life.  He would beg his
way back to the village, and to the upright, godly old schoolmaster,
or at least die in the country on the road thither.  He had not
associated with the ragamuffins of the court without learning a
little of their cunning; and he had waited impatiently for a chance
of eluding the watchfulness of the Cheap Jack.

But the sound of that song and the meeting with Mr. Ford's client
determined him to wait no longer, but to make a desperate effort for
freedom then and there.  The Cheap Jack was collecting the pence,
and Jan had made a few bold black strokes as a beginning of a new
sketch, when he ran up to the Cheap Jack and whispered, "Get me a
ha'perth of whitening, father, as fast as you can.  There's an oil-
shop yonder."

"All right, Jan," said the hunchback.  "Keep 'em together, my dear,
meanwhile.  We're doing prime, and you shall have a sausage for
supper."

As the Cheap Jack waddled away for the whitening, Jan said to the
lockers-on, "Keep your places, ladies and gentlemen, till I return,
and keep your eyes on the drawing, which is the last of the series,"
and ran off down a narrow street, at right angles to the oil-shop.

The crowd waited patiently for some moments.  Then the Cheap Jack
hurried back with the whitening.  But Jan returned no more.



CHAPTER XXXII.

THE BAKER.--ON AND ON.--THE CHURCH BELL.--A DIGRESSION.--A FAMILIAR
HYMN.--THE BOYS' HOME.

Jan stopped at last from lack of breath to go on.  His feet had been
winged by terror, and he looked back even now with fear to see the
Cheap Jack's misshapen figure in pursuit.  He had had no food for
hours, but the pence the dark gentleman had given him were in his
chalk pouch, and he turned into the first baker's shop he came to to
buy a penny loaf.  It was a small shop, served by a pleasant-faced
man, who went up and down, humming, whistling, and singing, -

     "Like tiny pipe of wheaten straw,
      The wren his little note doth swell,
      And every living thing that flies" -

"A penny loaf, please," said Jan, laying down the money, and the man
turned and said, "Why, you be the boy that draws on the pavement!"

For a moment Jan was silent.  It presented itself to him as a new
difficulty, that he was likely to be recognized.  There was a flour
barrel by the counter, and as he pondered he began mechanically to
sift the flour through his finger and thumb.

"You be used to flour seemingly," said the baker, smiling.  "Was 'ee
ever in a mill? 'ee seems to have a miller's thumb."

In a few minutes Jan had told his story, and had learned, with
amazement and delight, that the baker had not only been a
windmiller's man, but had worked in Master Lake's tower mill.  He
was, in fact, the man who had helped George the very night that Jan
arrived.  But he confirmed the fact that it was Sal who brought Jan,
by his account of her, and he seemed to think that she was probably
his mother.  He was very kind.  He refused to take payment for the
loaf, and went, humming, whistling, and singing, away to get Jan
some bacon to eat with it.

When he was alone, Jan's hand went back to the flour, and he sifted
and thought.  The baker was kind, but he had said that "it was an
ackerd thing for a boy to quarrel with's parents."  Jan felt that he
expected him to go home.  Perhaps at this moment the baker had gone,
with the best intentions, to fetch the Cheap Jack, and bring about a
family reunion.  Terror had become an abiding state of Jan's mind,
and it seized him afresh, like a palsy.  He left the penny on the
counter, and shook the flour-dust from his fingers, and, stealing
with side glances of dread into the street, he sped away once more.

He had no knowledge of localities.  He ran "on and on," as people do
in fairy tales.  Sometimes he rested on a doorstep, sometimes he hid
in a shutter box or under an archway.  He had learned to avoid the
police, and he moved quickly from one dark corner to another with a
hunted look in his black eyes.  Late in the night he found a heap of
straw near a warehouse, on which he lay down and fell asleep.  At
eight o'clock the next morning he was awakened by the clanging of a
bell, and he jumped up in time to avoid a porter who was coming to
the warehouse, and ran "on and on."

It was a bright morning, and the sun was shining; but Jan's feet
were sore, and his bones ached from cold and weariness.  Yesterday
the struggle to escape the Cheap Jack had kept him up, but now he
could only feel his utter loneliness and misery.  There was not a
friendly sound in all the noises of the great city,--the street
cries of food he could not buy, the quarrelling, the laughter with
which he had no concern, the tramp of strange feet, the roar of
traffic and prosperity in which he had no part.

He was so lonely, so desolate, that when a sound came to him which
was familiar and pleasant, and full of old and good and happy
associations, it seemed to bring his sad life to a climax, to give
just one strain too much to his powers of endurance.  Like the white
lights he put to his black sketches, it seemed to bring the darkness
of his life into relief, and he felt as if he could bear no more,
and would like to sit down and die.  The sound came through the
porch of a church.  It was the singing of a hymn,--one of Charles
Wesley's hymns, of which Master Swift was so fond.

The sooty iron gates were open, and so was the door.  Jan crept in
to peep, and he caught sight of a stained window full of pale faces,
which seemed to beckon him, and he went into the church and no one
molested him.

There is a very popular bit of what I venture to think a partly
false philosophy which comes up again and again in magazines and
story books in the shape of satirical contrasts between the words of
the General Confession, or the Litany, and the particular materials
in which the worshippers, the intercessors, and the confessing
sinners happen to be clothed.  But, since broadcloth has never yet
been made stout enough to keep temptation from the soul, and silk
has proved no protection against sorrow, I confess that I never
could see any thing more incongruous in the confessions and
petitions of handsomely dressed people than of ragged ones.  That
any sinner can be "miserable" in satin, seems impossible, or at
least offensive, to some minds; perhaps to those who know least of
the reckless, callous light-heartedness of the most ragged
reprobates.

This has nothing to do, it seems to me, with the fact that a certain
degree of outlay on dress is criminal, on several grave accounts;
nor even with the incongruous spectacle of a becoming bonnet
arranged during the Litany by the tightly gloved fingers of a
worshipper, who would probably not be any the more devout for being
uncomfortably conscious of bad clothes.  An old friend of my
childhood used to tell me that she always thought a good deal of her
dress before going to church, that she might quite forget it when
there.

Surely, dress has absolutely nothing to do with devotion.  And the
impertinent patronage of worshippers in "fustian" is at least as
offensive as the older-fashioned vulgarity of pride in congregations
who "come in their own carriages."  And I do protest against the
flippant inference that good clothes for the body must lower the
assumptions of the spirit, or make repentance insincere; which I no
more believe than that the worship of a clean Christian is less
acceptable than that of a brother who cannot afford or does not
value the use of soap.

I am perhaps anxious to defend this congregation, on which Jan
stumbled in the pale light of early morning in the city, from any
imputation on the sincerity of its worship, because it was mostly
very comfortably clad.  The men were chiefly business men, with a
good deal of the obnoxious "broadcloth" about them, and with well-
brushed hats beneath their seats.  One of the stoutest and most
comfortable-looking, with an intelligent face and a fair clean
complexion which spoke of good food, stood near the door.  He wore a
new great-coat with a velvet collar, but his gray eyes (they had
seen middle age, and did not shine with any flash of youthful
enthusiasm) were fixed upon the window, and he sang very heartily,
and by heart, -

     "Other Refuge have I none!
      Hangs my helpless soul on Thee;
      Leave, ah! leave me not alone,
      Still support and comfort me."

The tears flowed down Jan's cheeks.  It had been a favorite hymn of
his foster-mother, and he had often sung it to her.  Master Swift
used to "give the note," and then sink himself into the bass part,
and these quaint duets had been common at the mill.  How delightful
such simple pleasures seem to those who look back on them from the
dark places of the earth, full of misery and wickedness!

In spite of his tears, Jan was fain to join as the hymn went on, and
he sang like a bird, -

     "All my trust on Thee is stayed,
      All my help from Thee I bring;
      Cover my defenceless head
      With the shadow of Thy wing."

It was the hymn after the third collect, and when it was ended the
comfortable-looking gentleman motioned Jan into a seat, and he knelt
down.

When the service was over, the same gentleman took him by the arm,
and asked, "What's the matter with you, my boy?"

A rapid survey of his woes led Jan to reply, "I've no home, sir."

The congregation had dispersed quickly, for the men were going to
business.

This gentleman walked fast, and he hurried Jan along with him.

"Who are your parents?" he asked.  The service had recalled Jan's
highest associations, and he was anxious to tell the strict truth.

"I don't rightly know, sir," said he.

"Are you hungry?"

"Yes, sir," sobbed poor Jan.

They were stopping before a large house, and the gentleman said,
"Look here, my boy.  If you had a good home, and good food, and
clothes, would you work?  Would you try to be a good lad, and learn
an honest trade?"

"I'd be glad, sir," said Jan.

"Have you ever worked?  What can you do?" asked the gentleman.

"I can mind pigs; but I do think 'twould be best for I to be in a
mill, and I've got a miller's thumb."  Jan said this because the
idea had struck him that if he could only get home again he might
hire himself out at a mop to Master Lake.  A traditional belief in
the force of the law of hiring made him think that this would
protect him against any claim of the Cheap Jack.  Before the
gentleman could reply, the house-door was opened by a boy some years
older than Jan, who was despatched to fetch "the master."  Jan felt
sure that it must be a school, though he was puzzled by the contents
of the room in which they waited.  It was filled with pretty
specimens of joiner's and cabinet-maker's work, some quite and some
partly finished.  There were also brushes of various kinds, so that,
if there had been a suitable window, Jan would have concluded that
it was a shop.  In two or three moments the master's step sounded in
the passage.

Jan had pleasant associations with the word "master," and he looked
up with some vague fancy of seeing a second Master Swift.  Not that
Master Swift, or any one else in the slow-going little village, ever
walked with this sharp, hasty tread, as if one hoped to overtake
time!  With such a step the gentleman himself went away, when he had
said to Jan, "Be a good boy, my lad, and attend to your master, and
he'll be a good friend to you."

He was not in the least like Master Swift.  He was young, and
youthfully dressed.  A schoolmaster with neither spectacles nor a
black coat was a new idea to Jan; but he seemed to be kind, for,
with a sharp look at Jan's pinched face, he said, "You'll be glad of
some breakfast, my lad, I fancy; and breakfast's only just over.
Come along."  And away he went at double quick time down the
passage, and Jan ran after him.

On their way to the kitchen, they crossed an open court where boys
were playing, and round which ran mottoes in large letters.

"You can read?" said the master, quickly, as he caught Jan's eyes
following the texts.  "Have you ever been to school?"

"Yes, sir," said Jan.

"Can you write?  What else have you learned?"

Jan pondered his stock of accomplishments.  "I can write, sir, and
cipher.  And I've learned geography and history, and Master Swift
gave I lessons in mechanics, and I be very fond of poetry and
painting, and" -

The master was painfully familiar with the inventive and boastful
powers of street boys.  He pushed Jan before him into the kitchen,
saying smartly, but good-humoredly, "There, there!  Don't make up
stories, my boy.  You must learn to speak the truth, if you come
into the Home.  We don't expect poets and painters," he added,
smiling.  "If you can chop wood, and learn what you're taught,
you'll do for us."

A smile stole over the face of a shrewd-looking lad who was washing
dishes at the table.  Jan saw that he was not believed, and his
tears fell into the mug of cocoa, and on to the bread which formed
his breakfast.



CHAPTER XXXIII.

THE BUSINESS MAN AND THE PAINTER.--PICTURES AND POT BOILERS.--
CIMABUE AND GIOTTO.--THE SALMON-COLORED OMNIBUS.

The business men were half way to their business when the shadow of
the sooty church still fell upon one or two of the congregation who
dispersed more slowly; a few aged poor who lingered from infirmity
as well as leisure; and a man neither very old nor very poor, whose
strong limbs did not bear him away at a much quicker pace.  His
enjoyment of the peculiar pleasures of an early walk was deliberate
as well as full, and bustle formed no necessary part of his trade.
He was a painter.

The business gentleman hurrying out of the Boys' Home stumbled
against the painter, whom he knew, but whom just now he would not
have been sorry to avoid.  The very next salmon-colored omnibus that
passed the end of the street would only just enable him to be
punctual if he could catch it, and the painter, in his opinion, had
"no sense of the value of time."  The painter, on the other hand,
held as strong a conviction that his friend's sense of the monetary
value of time was so exaggerated as to hinder his sense of many
higher things in this beautiful world.  But they were fast friends
nevertheless, and with equal charity pitied each other respectively
for a slovenly and a slavish way of life.

"My dear friend!" cried the artist, seizing the other by the elbow,
"you are just coming from where I was thinking of going."

"By all means, my dear fellow," said Jan's friend, shaking hands to
release his elbow, "the master will be delighted, and--my time is
not my own, you know."

"I know well," said the artist, with a little humorous malice.  "It
belongs to others.  That is your benevolence.  So" -

"Come, come!" laughed the other.  "I'm not a man of leisure like
you.  I must catch the next salmon-colored omnibus."

"I'll walk with you to it, and talk as we go.  You can't propose to
run at your time of life, and with your position in the city!  Now
tell me, my good friend, the boys in your Home are the offscouring
of the streets, aren't they?"

"They are mostly destitute lads, but they have never been convicted
of crime any more than yourself.  It is the fundamental distinction
between our Home and other industrial schools.  Our effort is to
save boys whom destitution has ALL BUT made criminal.  It is not a
reformatory."

"I beg your pardon, I know.  But I was speaking of their bodily
condition only.  I want a model, and should be glad to get it
without the nuisance of sketching in the slums.  Such a ragged,
pinched, eager, and yet stupid child as might sit homeless between
the black walls of Newgate and the churchyard of St. Sepulchre,--a
waif of the richest and most benevolent society in Christendom, for
whom the alternative of the churchyard would be the better."

"Not the only one, I trust," said the business gentleman, almost
passionately.  "I trust in GOD, not the only alternative.  If I have
a hope, it is that of greater and more effective efforts than
hitherto to rescue the children of London from crime."

In the warmth of this outburst, he had permitted a salmon-colored
omnibus to escape him, but, being much too good a man of business to
waste time in regrets, he placed himself at a convenient point for
catching the next, and went on speaking.

"I am glad to hear you have another picture in hand."

"Not a PICTURE--a POT BOILER," said the artist, testily.  "Low art--
domestic sentiment--cheap pathos.  My PICTURE no one would look at,
even if it were finished, and if I could bring myself to part with
it."

"Mind, you give me the first refusal."

"Of my PICTURE?"

"Yes, that is, I mean your street boy.  It is just in my line.  I
delight in your things.  But don't make it too pathetic, or my wife
won't be able to bear it in the drawing room.  Your things always
make her cry."

"That's the pot boiler," said the artist; "I really wish you'd look
at my picture, unfinished as it is.  I should like you to have it.
Anybody'll take the pot boiler.  I want a model for the picture too,
and, oddly enough, a boy; but one you can't provide me with."

"No?  The subject you say is"--said the man of business, dreamily,
as he strove at the same time to make out if a distant omnibus were
yellow or salmon-colored.

"Cimabue finding the boy Giotto drawing on the sand.  Ah! my friend,
can one realize that meeting?  Can one picture the generous glow
with which the mature and courtly artist recognized unconscious
genius struggling under the form of a shepherd lad,--yearning out of
his great Italian eyes over that glowing landscape whose beauties
could not be written in the sand?  Will the golden age of the arts
ever return?  We are hardly moving towards it, I fear.  For I have
found a model for my Cimabue,--an artist too, and a true one; but no
boy Giotto!  Still I should like you to see it.  I flatter myself
the coloring" -

"Salmon," said the man of business, briskly.  "I thought it was
yellow.  My dear fellow--HI!--take as many boys as you like--TO THE
CITY!"

The conductor of the salmon-colored omnibus touched his bell, and
the painter was left alone.



CHAPTER XXXIV.

A CHOICE OF VOCATIONS.--RECREATION HOUR.--THE BOW LEGGED BOY.--
DRAWING BY HEART.--GIOTTO.

Jan found favor with his new friends.  The master's sharp eyes noted
that the prescribed ablutions seemed both pleasant and familiar to
the new boy, and the superintendent of the wood-chopping department
expressed his opinion that Jan's intelligence and dexterity were
wasted among the fagots, and that his vocation was to be a
brushmaker at least, if not a joiner.

Of such trades as were open to him in the Home Jan inclined to
cabinet-making.  It must be amusing to dab little bunches of
bristles so deftly into little holes with hot pitch as to produce a
hearth-brush, but as a life-work it does not satisfy ambition.  For
boot-making he felt no fancy, and the tailor's shop had a dash of
corduroy and closeness in the atmosphere not grateful to nostrils so
long refreshed by the breezes of the plains.  But, when an elder boy
led him into the airy room of the cabinet-maker, Jan found a subject
of interest.  The man was making a piece of furniture to order; the
boys had done the rough work, and he was finishing it.  It was a
combination of shelves and cupboard, and was something like an old
oak cabinet which stood in Master Chuter's parlor, and which, in
Jan's opinion, was both handsomer and more convenient than this.
When the joiner, amused by the keen gaze of Jan's black eyes, asked
him good-naturedly "how he liked it," Jan expressed his opinion, to
illustrate which he involuntarily took up the fat pencil lying on
the bench, and made a sketch of Master Chuter's cabinet upon a bit
of wood.

News spreads with mysterious swiftness in all communities, large and
small.  Before dinner-time, it was known throughout the Home that
the master joiner had applied for the new boy as a pupil, and that
he could draw with a black-lead pencil, and set his betters to
rights.

The master had passed through several phases of feeling over Jan
during that morning.  His first impression had been dispelled by
Jan's orderly ways, and the absence of any vagrant restlessness
about him.  The joiner's report awoke a hope that he would become a
star of the institution, but as his acquirements came to the light,
and he proved not merely to have a good voice, but to have been in a
choir, the master's generous hopes received a check, and as the day
passed on he became more and more convinced that it was a case to be
"restored to his friends."

When two o'clock came, and the boys were all out for "recreation,"
Jan had to endure some chaff on the subject of his accomplishments.
But the banter of London street boys was familiar to him, and he
took it in good part.  When they found him good-tempered, he was
soon popular, and they asked his history with friendly curiosity.

"And vot sort of a mansion did you hang out in ven you wos at home?"
inquired a little lad, whose rosy cheeks and dancing eyes would have
qualified him to sit as a model for the hero of some little tale of
rustic life and simplicity, but who had graduated in the lowest lore
of the streets so much before he was properly able to walk that he
was bandy-legged in consequence.  There must have been some blood in
him that was domestic and not vagrant in its currents, for he was as
a rule one of the steadiest and best-behaved boys in the
establishment.  Only from time to time he burst out into street
slang of the strongest description, apparently as a relief to his
feelings.  Happily for the cause it had at heart, the Boys' Home was
guided by large-minded counsels, and if the eyes of the master were
as the eyes of Argus, they could also wink on occasion.  "Hout with
it!" said the bow-legged boy, straddling before Jan.  "If it wos
Buckingham Palace as you resided in, make a clean breast of it, and
hease your mind."

"Thee knows more of palaces than the likes of me.  Thee manners be
so fine," said Jan; and the repartee drew a roar of laughter, in
which the bandy-legged boy joined.  "But I've lived in a windmill,"
Jan added, "and that be more than thee've done, I fancy."

Some of the boys had seen windmills, and some had not; and there was
a strong tendency among the boys who had to give exaggerated, not to
say totally fictitious, descriptions of those buildings to the boys
who had not.  There was a quick, prevailing impression, however,
that Jan's word could be trusted, and he was appealed to.  "Take it
off in a picter," said the bandy-legged boy.  "We heered as you took
off a SWEET OF FURNITUR in the Master's face.  Take off the
windmill, if you lived in it."

There was a bit of chalk in Jan's pocket, and the courtyard was
paved.  He knelt down, and the boys gathered round him.  They were
sharp enough to be sympathetic, and when he begged them to be quiet
they kept a breathless silence, which was broken only by the distant
roar of London outside, and by the Master's voice speaking in an
adjoining passage.

"I can hardly say, sir, that I FEAR, but I think you'll find most of
them look too hearty and comfortable for your purpose."

About Jan the silence was breathless.  The bow-legged boy literally
laid his hand upon his mouth, and he had better have laid it over
his eyes, for they seemed in danger of falling out of their sockets.

Jan covered his for a moment, and then looked upwards.  Back upon
his sensitive memory rolled the past, like a returning tide which
sweeps every thing before it.  Much clearer than those roofs and
chimney-stacks the windmill stood against the sky, with arms
outstretched as if to recall its truant son.  If he had needed it to
draw from, it was there, plain enough.  But how should he need to
see it, on whose heart every line of it was written?  He could have
laid his hand in the dark upon the bricks that were weather-stained
into fanciful landscapes upon its walls, and planted his feet on the
spot where the grass was most worn down about its base.

He drew with such power and rapidity that only some awe of the look
upon his face could have kept silence in the little crowd whom he
had forgotten.  And when the last scrap of chalk had crumbled, and
he dragged his blackened finger over the foreground till it bled,
the voice which broke the silence was the voice of a stranger, who
stood with the master on the threshold of the court-yard.

Never perhaps was more conveyed in one word than in that which he
spoke, though its meaning was known to himself alone, -

                        "GIOTTO!"



CHAPTER XXXV.

"WITHOUT CHARACTER?"--THE WIDOW.--THE BOW-LEGGED BOY TAKES SERVICE.-
-STUDIOS AND PAINTERS.

"Manage it as you like," the artist had said to the master of the
Boys' Home.  "Lend him, sell him, apprentice him, give him to me,--
whichever you prefer.  Say I want a boot-black--a clothes-brusher--a
palette-setter--a bound slave--or an adopted son, as you please.
The boy I must have:  in what capacity I get him is nothing to me."

"I am bound to remind you, sir," said the master, "that he was
picked up in the streets, and has had no training, and earned no
outfit from us.  He comes to you without clothes, without character"
-

"Without character?" cried the artist.  "Heavens and earth!  Did you
ever study physiognomy?  Do you know any thing of faces?"

"It is part of my duty to know something of them, sir," began the
master, who was slightly nettled.

"Then don't talk nonsense, my friend, but send me the boy, as soon
as is consistent with your rules and regulations."

The boy was Jan.  The man of business gave his consent, but he
implored his "impulsive friend," as he termed the artist, not to
ruin the lad by indulgence, but to keep him in his proper place, and
give him plenty to do.  In conformity with this sensible advice,
Jan's first duties in his new home were to clean the painter's boots
when he could find them, shake his velveteen coat when the pockets
were empty, sweep the studio, clean brushes, and go errands.  The
artist was an old bachelor, infamously cheated by the rheumatic
widow he had paid to perform the domestic work of his rooms; and
when this afflicted lady gave warning on being asked for hot water
at a later hour than usual, Jan persuaded the artist to enforce her
departure, and took her place.  So heavy is the iron weight of
custom--when it takes the form of an elderly and widowed domestic to
a single gentleman--that even Jan's growing influence would not have
secured her dismissal, had not the artist had a particular reason
for wishing the boy's practical talents to be displayed.  He
suspected his business friend of distrusting them because of Jan's
artistic genius, and he was proud to boast that he had never known
the comfort of clean rooms and well-cooked food till "the boy
Giotto" became his housekeeper.

The work was play to Jan after his slavery to the hunchback, and on
his happiness in living with a painter it is needless to dwell.  For
a week or two, the artist was busy with his "pot boiler," and did
not pay much attention to his new apprentice, and Jan watched
without disturbing him; so that when he offered to set the painter's
palette, his master regarded his success as an inspiration of
genius, rather than as a result of habits of observation.

The painter, though clever and ambitious, and with a very pure and
very elegant taste, was no mighty genius himself.  The average of
public taste in art is low enough, but in refusing his "high art"
pictures, and buying his domestic ones, the public was not far
wrong.  It must be confessed that he had also a vein of indolence in
his nature, and Jan soon painted most of the pot boilers.  Another
of his duties was to sit as a model for the picture.  The painter
sketched him again and again, and was never quite satisfied.  What
the vision of the windmill had lit up in the depth of his black eyes
could not be recalled to order in the painter's studio.

"I tell you what it is," said the artist one day; "domestic
servitude is taking the poetry out of you.  You're getting fat,
Giotto!  Understand that from henceforth I forbid you to black boots
or grates, to brush, dust, wash, cook, or whatever disturbs the
peace or hinders the growth of the soul.  I must get the widow
back!" and the painter heaved a deep sigh.

But Jan was resolute against the widow.  He effected a compromise.
The bandy-legged boy from the Home was taken into the painter's
service, and Jan made himself responsible for his good conduct.  He
began by warning his vivacious friend that no freemasonry of common
street-boyhood could hinder the duty he owed to his master of
protecting his property and insuring his comfort, and that he must
sooner tell tales of his friend than have the painter wronged.  To
this homily the bandy-legged boy listened with his red cheeks
artificially distended, and occasional murmurs of "Crikey!" but he
took service on these terms, and did Jan no discredit.  He was
incorruptibly honest, and when from time to time the street fever
seized him, and he left his work to play at post-leaping outside,
Jan would quietly take his place, and did not betray him.  This
kindness invariably drew tears of penitence from the soft-hearted
young vagrant, his freaks grew rarer and rarer, and he finally
became as steady as he was quick-witted.

Jan's duties were now confined to the painting-room, and he soon
became familiar with the studios of other artists, where his
intelligent admiration of paintings which took his fancy, his
modesty, his willing good-nature, and his precocious talent made him
a general favorite.

He went regularly with his master to the early service in the sooty
little church, in the choir of which he was finally enrolled.  And
the man of business kept a friendly eye on him, and gave him many a
piece of sensible and very practical advice, to balance the evils of
an artistic career.

With the Bohemianism of artist-life Jan was soon as familiar as with
the Bohemianism of the streets.  A certain old-fashioned gravity,
which had always been amongst his characteristics, helped him to
preserve both his dignity and modesty in a manner which gave the man
of business great satisfaction.  He might easily have been spoiled,
but he was not.  He answered respectfully to about a dozen names
which the vagrant fancy of the young painters bestowed upon him:
Jan-of-all-work--Jan Steen--The Flying Dutchman--Crimson Lake--
Madder Lake--and Miller's Thumb.

But his master called him GIOTTO.

He was very happy, but the old home haunted him, and he longed
bitterly for some news of his foster-father and the schoolmaster.
Whilst the terror of the Cheap Jack was still oppressing him, he had
feared to open any communication with the past, for fear the
wretched couple who were supposed to be his parents should discover
and reclaim him.  But as his nerves recovered their tone, as the
horrors of his life as a screever faded into softer tints, as that
boon of poor humanity--forgetfulness--healed his wounds, and he
began to go about the streets without thinking of the hunchback at
every corner, he felt more and more inclined to risk any thing to
know how his old friends fared.  There also grew upon him a
conviction that the Cheap Jack's story was false.  He knew enough of
art now, and of the value of his own powers, and of the struggle for
livelihoods in London, to see that it had been a very good
speculation to kidnap him.  He had serious doubts whether the cart
had been driven round by the mill, and whether Master Lake had
refused to let him be awakened from his sleep, and had said it was,
"All right, and he hoped the lad would do his duty to his good
parents."  He remembered, too, the hunchback's words when he lay
speechless from the drugged liquor, and these raised a puzzling
question:  Why should "the nobs" recognize him?  He had learned what
NOBS are.  Spelt without a "k," they are grand people, and what had
grand people to do with Sal's son?

One cannot live without sympathy, and Jan confided the complexities
of his history to the bow-legged boy, and the interest they awakened
in this young gentleman could not but be gratifying to his friend.
He kept one eye closed during the story, as if he saw the whole
thing (TOO clearly) at a glance.  He broke the thread of Jan's
narrative by comments which had no obvious bearing on the facts,
and, when it was ended, be gave it as his opinion that certain penny
romances which he named were a joke to it.

"Oh, my! what a pity we can't employ a detective!" he said.
"Whoever knowed a young projidy find his noble relations without a
detective?  But never mind, Jan.  I knows their ways.  I'm up to
their dodges.  Fust of all, you makes up your mind deep down in your
inside, and then you says nothing to nobody, but follows it up.
Fol-lows it up!"

"I don't know what to follow," said Jan; "and how can I make up my
mind, when I know nothing?"

"That's just where it is," said his friend; "if you knowed every
thing, wot 'ud be the use of coming the detective tip, and making it
up in your inside?"

The bow-legged boy had made it up in his.  He had decided that Jan
was a nobleman in disguise, and that his father was a duke, or a
"jook," as he called him.  Jan's active imagination could not quite
resist the influence of this romance, and he lay awake at night
patching together the hunchback's reference to the nobs, and the
incredulous glance of the dark-eyed gentleman who had given him the
half pence, and who was certainly a nob himself.  And never did he
leave the house on an errand for the painter that the bow-legged boy
did not burst forth, dish-cloth or dirty boots in hand, from some
unexpected quarter, and adjure him to "look out for the jook."

It was a lovely afternoon when, by his friend's advice, Jan betook
himself to the Park, that the nobs might have that opportunity of
recognizing him which the wide-mouthed woman had feared.  He had
washed his face very clean, and brushed his old jacket with
trembling hands, and the bow-legged boy had tied a spotted scarf,
that had been given to himself by a stableman in the mews opposite,
round Jan's neck in what he called "a gent's knot," and the poor
child went to seek his fate with a beating heart.

There were nobs enough.  Round and round they came, in all the
monotony of a not very exhilarating amusement.  The crowd was so
great that the carriages crawled rather than drove, and Jan could
see the people well.  Many a lovely face, set in a soft frame of
delicate hue, caught his artistic eye, and he watched for and
recognized it again.  But only a passing glance of languid curiosity
met his eager gaze in return.  Not a nob recognized him.  But a
policeman looked at him as if he did, and Jan crept away.

When he got home, he found household matters at a standstill, for
the bow-legged boy had been tearfully employed in thinking how Jan
would despise his old friends when the "jook" had acknowledged him,
and he had become a nob.  And as Jan set matters to rights, he
resolved that he would not go to the Park again to look for
relatives.



CHAPTER XXXVI.

THE MILLER'S LETTER.--A NEW POT BOILER SOLD.

Jan was very happy, and the brief dream of the "jook" was over, but
his heart clung to his old home.  If love and care, if tenderness in
sickness and teaching in health, are parental qualities, why should
he seek another parent than Master Swift?  And had he not a foster-
father to whom he was bound by all those filial ties of up-bringing
from infancy, and of a common life, a common trade, and common joys
and sorrows in the past, such as could bind him to no other father?

He begged a bit of paper from the painter, and wrote a letter to
Master Lake, which would have done more credit to the schoolmaster's
instructions had it been less blotted with tears.  He besought his
foster-father not to betray him to the Cheap Jack, and he inquired
tenderly after the schoolmaster and Rufus.

The windmiller was no great scholar, as was shown by his reply:  -

"MY DEAR JAN,

"Your welcome letter to hand, and I do hope, my dear Jan, It finds
you well as it leave me at present.  I be mortal bad with a cough,
and your friends as searched everywhere, and dragged every place for
you, encluding the plains for twenty mile round and down by the
watermill.  That Cheap John be no more your vather nor mine, an e'd
better not show his dirty vace yearabouts after all he stole.  but
your poor mother, she was allus took in by him, but she said with
her own mouth, that woman be no more the child's mother, and never
wos a mother, and your mother knowed wots wot, poor zowl!  And I'm
glad, my dear Jan, you be doing well in a genteel line, though I did
hope you'd take to the mill; but work is slack, and I'm not wot I
wos, and I do miss Master Swift.  He had a stroke after you left,
and confined to the house, so I will conclude, my dear Jan, and go
down and rejoice his heart to hear you be alive.  I'd main like to
see you, Jan, my dear, and so for sartin would he and all enquiring
friends; and I am till deth your loving vather, or as good, and I
shan't grudge you if so be you finds a better.

                                  "ABEL LAKE."

"P.S.  I'd main like to see your vace again, Jan, my dear."

Jan sobbed so bitterly in reading the postscript that, after vain
attempts to console him by chaff, the bow-legged boy wept from
sympathy.

As to the painter, the whole letter so caught his capricious fancy
that he was for ever questioning Jan as to the details of his life
in that out-of-the-world district where the purest breath of heaven
turned the sails of the windmill, and where the miller took payment
for his work "in kind."

"It must be a wonderful spot, Giotto," said he; "and, if I were
richer, just now we'd go down together, and paint sunsets, and see
your friends."  And he walked up and down the studio, revolving his
new caprice, whilst Jan tried to think if any thing were likely to
bring money into his master's pocket before long.  Suddenly the
artist seized a sketch that was lying near, and, turning it over,
began one on the other side, questioning Jan as he drew.  "What do
old country wives dress in down yonder?--What did you wear in the
mill?--Where does the light come from in a round-house," etc.

Presently he flung it to Jan, and, in answer to the boy's cry of
admiration, growled, "Ay, ay.  You must do what YOU can now, for
every after-touch of mine will spoil it.  There are hundreds of men,
Giotto, whose sketches are good, and their paintings daubs.  But it
is only the sketches of great men that sell.  The public likes
canvas and linseed oil for its money, where small reputations are
concerned."

The sketch was of a peep into the round-house.  Jan, toll-dish in
hand, with a quaint business gravity, was met by a dame who was just
raising her old back after letting down her sack of gleanings, with
garrulous good-humor in her blinking eyes and withered face.

"Chiaroscuro good," dictated the painter; "execution sketchy;
coloring quiet, to be in keeping with the place and subject, but
pure.  You know the scene better than I, so work away, Giotto.
Motto--'Will ye pay or toll it, mother?'  Price twenty-five guineas.
Take it to What's-his-name's, and if it sells we'll go to Arcadia,
Giotto mio!  The very thought of those breezes is as quinine to my
languid faculties!"

Jan worked hard at the new "pot boiler."  The artist painted the
boy's figure himself, and Jan did most of the rest.  The bow-legged
boy stooped in a petticoat as a model for the old woman, murmuring
at intervals, "Oh, my, here IS a game!" and, when the painter had
left the room, his grave speculations as to whether the withered
face of the dame were a good likeness of his own chubby cheeks made
Jan laugh till he could hardly hold his palette.  It was done at
last, and Jan took it to the picture-dealer's.

The poor boy could hardly keep out of the street where the picture-
dealer lived.  One afternoon, as he was hanging about the window,
the business gentleman came by and asked kindly after his welfare.
Jan was half ashamed of the hope with which he told the tale of the
pot boiler.

"And you did some of it?" said the business gentleman, peering in
through his spectacles.

"Only the painting, sir, not the design," said Jan.

"And you want very much to go and see your old home?"

"I do, sir," said Jan.

The business gentleman put his gold spectacles into their case, and
laid his hand on Jan's shoulder.  "I am not much of a judge of
genius," said he, "but if you have it, and if you live to make a
fortune by it, remember, my boy, that there is no luxury which money
puts in a man's power like the luxury of helping others."  With
which he stepped briskly into the picture-dealer's.

And half an hour afterwards Jan burst into the painter's studio,
crying, "It's sold, sir!"

"Sold!" shouted the painter, in boyish glee.  "Hooray!  Where's that
rascal Bob?  Oh, I know!  I sent him for the beer.  Giotto, my dear
fellow, I have some shooting-boots somewhere, if you can find them,
and a tourist's knapsack, and" -

But Jan had started to find the boots, and the bow-legged boy, who
had overheard the news as he left the house, rushed up the street,
with his head down, crying, "It's sold! it's sold!" and, as he ran,
he jostled against a man in a white apron, carrying a pot of green
paint to some area railings.

"Wot's sold?" said he, testily, as he recovered his balance.

"You a painter, and don't know?" said the rosy-cheeked boy.  "Oh,
my!  Wot's sold?  Why, I'm sold, and IT'S sold.  That walable picter
I wos about to purchase for my mansion in Piccadilly."  And,
feigning to burst into a torrent of tears, he darted round the
corner and into the public-house.



CHAPTER XXXVII.

SUNSHINE AFTER STORM.

It had been a wet morning.  The heavy rain-clouds rolled over the
plains, hanging on this side above the horizon as if in an instant
they must fall and crush the solid earth, and passing away on that
side in dark, slanting veils of shower; giving to the vast monotony
of the wide field of view that strange interchange of light and
shadow, gleam and gloom, which makes the poetry of the plains.

The rain had passed.  The gray mud of the chalk roads dried up into
white dust almost beneath the travellers' feet as they came out
again after temporary shelter; and that brightest, tenderest smile,
with which, on such days, the sun makes evening atonement for his
absence, shone and sparkled, danced and glowed from the windmill to
the water-meads.  It reopened the flowers, and drew fragrant answer
from the meadow-sweet and the bay-leaved willow.  It made the birds
sing, and the ploughboy whistle, and the old folk toddle into their
gardens to smell the herbs.  It cherished silent satisfaction on the
bronze face of Rufus resting on his paws, and lay over Master
Swift's wan brow like the aureole of some austere saint canonized,
just on this side the gates of Paradise.

The simile is not inapt, for the coarse and vigorous features of the
schoolmaster had been refined to that peculiar nobleness which,
perhaps, the sharp tool of suffering--used to its highest ends--can
alone produce.  And the smile of patience, like a victor's wreath,
lay now where hot passions and imperious temper had once struggled
and been overcome.

The schoolmaster was paralyzed in his lower limbs, and he sat in a
wheel-chair of his own devising, which he could propel with his own
hands.  The agonizing anxiety and suspense which followed Jan's
disappearance had broken him down, and this was the end.  Rufus was
still his only housekeeper, but a woman from the village came in to
give him necessary help.

"And it be 'most like waiting upon a angel," said she.

This woman had gone for the night, and Master Swift sat in his
invalid chair in the little porch, where he could touch the
convolvulus bells with his hand, and see what some old pupil of his
had done towards "righting up" the garden.  It was an instance of
that hardly earned grace of patience in him that he did not vex
himself to see how sorely the garden suffered by his helplessness.

Not without cause was the evening smile of sunlight reflected on
Master Swift's lips.  Between the fingers of a hand lying on his lap
lay Jan's letter to announce that he and the artist were coming to
the cottage, and in intervals of reading and re-reading it the
schoolmaster spouted poetry, and Rufus wagged a sedately sympathetic
tail.

     "How fresh, O Lord, how sweet and clean
        Are Thy returns! even as the flowers in spring;
      To which, besides their own demean,
        The late past frosts tributes of pleasure bring.
                 Grief melts away
                 Like snow in May,
        As if there were no such cold thing."

And, waving his hand after the old manner towards the glowing water-
meadows, he went on with increasing emphasis:  -

     "Who would have thought my shrivelled heart
        Could have recovered greennesse?"

Perhaps Rufus felt himself bound to answer what had a tone of appeal
in it, or perhaps some strange sympathy, not with Master Swift,
began already to disturb him.  He rose and knocked up the hand in
which the letter lay with his long nose, and wandered restlessly
about, and then settled down again with his eyes towards the garden-
gate.

The old man sat still.  The evening breeze stirred his white hair,
and he drank in the scents drawn freshly from field and flowers
after the rain, and they were like balm to him.  As he sat up, his
voice seemed to recover its old power, and he clasped his hands
together over Jan's letter, and went on:  -

     "And now in age I bud again,
        After so many deaths I live and write;
      I once more smell the dew and rain,
        And relish versing:  O my only Light!
                 It cannot be
                 That I am he
        On whom Thy tempests fell all night!"

So far Mr. George Herbert; but the poem was never finished, for
Rufus jumped up with a cry, and after standing for a moment with
stiffened limbs, and muffled whines, as if he could not believe his
own glaring yellow eyes, he burst away with tenfold impetus, and
dragged, and tore, and pulled, and all but carried Jan to the
schoolmaster's feet.

And the painter walked away down the garden, and stood looking long
over the water-meadows.



CHAPTER XXXVIII.

A PAINTER'S EDUCATION.--MASTER CHUTER'S PORT.--A FAREWELL FEAST.--
THE SLEEP OF THE JUST.

"I hope, Jan," said Master Swift, "that the gentleman will overlook
my want of respect towards himself, in consideration of what it was
to me to see your face again."

"Don't distress me by speaking of it, Mr. Swift," said the painter,
taking his hand, and sitting down beside him in the porch.

As he returned the artist's friendly grasp, the schoolmaster scanned
his face with some of the old sharpness.  "Sir," said he, "I beg you
to forgive my freedom.  I'm a rough man with a rough tongue, which I
could never teach to speak the feelings of my heart; but I humbly
thank you, sir, for your goodness to this boy."

"It's a very selfish kind of goodness at present, Mr. Swift, and I
fancy some day the obligation of the acquaintance will be on my
side."

"Jan," said the schoolmaster, "take Rufus wi' ye, and run that
errand I telled ye.  Rufus'll carry your basket."  When they had
gone, he turned earnestly to the painter.

"Sir, I'm speaking to ye out of my ignorance and my anxiety.  Ye
want the lad to be a painter.  Will he be a great painter?  I'm
reminding you of what ye'll know better than me (though not by
yourself, for Jan tells me you're a grand artist), that a man may
have the ambition and the love, and some talent for an art, and yet
be just without that divine spark which the gods withhold.  Sir, GOD
forbid that I should undervalue the pure pleasure of even that
little gift; but it's ill for a lad when he has just that much of an
art to keep him from a thrifty trade--and NO MORE."

The painter replied as earnestly as Master Swift had spoken, -

"Jan's estimate of me is weaker than his judgment in art is wont to
be.  I speak to understanding ears, and you will know that I have
some true feeling for my art, when I tell you that I know enough to
know that I shall never be a great painter; and it will help you to
put confidence in my assurance that, if he lives, JAN WILL."

Deep emotion kept the old man silent.  It was a mixed feeling,--
first, intense pride and pleasure, and then a pang of
disappointment.  Had he not been the first to see genius in the
child?  Had he not built upon him one more ambition for himself,--
the ambition of training the future great man?  And now another had
taken his office.

"You look disappointed," said the artist.

"It is the vile selfishness in me, sir.  I had hoped the boy's gifts
would have been what I could have trained at my own hearth.  It is
only one more wilful fancy, once more thwarted."

"Selfish I am sure it is not!" said the painter, hotly; "and as to
such benevolence being thwarted as a sort of punishment for I don't
know what, I believe nothing of the kind."

"You don't know, sir," said the old man, firmly.  "Not that I'm
speaking of the Lord's general dealings.  There are tender, gentle
souls, I know well, who seem only to grow the purer and better for
having the desire of their eyes granted to them; but there are
others whom, for their own good, the Father of all sees needful to
chasten to the end."

"My experience lies in another direction," said the painter,
impetuously.  "With what awe do you suppose indolent men, whose easy
years of self-indulgent life have been broken by no real calamity,
look upon others on whose heads blow falls after blow, though their
existence is an hourly struggle towards perfection?  There are some
stagnant pools whose peace the Angel never disturbs.  Does GOD, who
takes pleasure in perfecting the saint and pardoning the sinner,
forget some of us because we are not worth remembering?"

"He forgets none of us, my dear sir," said the schoolmaster, "and He
draws us to Himself at different times, and by different roads.  I
wanted to be the child's teacher, but He has chosen you, and will
bless ye in the work."

The painter drove his hands through his bushy hair, and spoke more
vehemently than before.

"_I_ his teacher, and not you?  My good friend, I at least am the
better judge of what makes a painter's education.  Is the man who
shows a Giotto how to use this brush, or mix that paint, to be
called his teacher?  No, not for teaching him, forsooth, what he
would have learned of anybody, everybody, nobody, somehow, anyhow,
or done just as well without.  But the man who taught him to work as
a matter of principle, and apart from inclination (a lesson which
not all geniuses learn); the man who fostered the love of Nature in
him, and the spirit of poetry,--qualities without which
draughtsmanship and painting had better not be; the man who by
example and precept led him to find satisfaction in duty done, and
happiness in simple pleasures and domestic affections; the man who
so fixed these high and pure lessons in his mind, at its most
susceptible age, that the foulest dens of London could not corrupt
him; the man whose beloved and reverenced face would rise up in
judgment against him if he could ever hereafter degrade his art to
be a pander of vice, or a mere trick of the workshop;--this man,
Master Swift, has been the painter's schoolmaster!"

Master Swift was not accustomed to betray emotion, but his nerves
were less strong than they had been, and self-control was more
difficult; and with his horny hands he hid the cheeks down which
tears of gratified pride would force their way.

He had not found voice to speak, when Rufus appeared at the gate
with one basket, followed by Jan and the little innkeeper with
another.  Why Master Chuter had come, and why Jan was looking so
particularly well satisfied, must be explained.

Whilst the painter was still gazing across the water-meadows, Master
Swift, who was the soul of hospitality, had told Jan where to find a
few shillings in a certain drawer, and had commissioned him to lay
these out in the wherewithal for an evening meal.  Jan had had some
anxiety in connection with the duty intrusted to him.  Firstly, he
well knew that the few shillings were what the schoolmaster must
depend on for that week's living.  Secondly, though it was his old
friend's all, it was a sum very inadequate to provide such a meal as
Jan would have liked to set before the painter.  At his age,
children are very sensitive on behalf of their grown-up friends, and
like to maintain the credit of home.  The provoking point was that
Jan had plenty of pocket-money, with which he could have supplied
deficiencies, had he dared; for the painter, besides buying him an
outfit for the journey, had liberally rewarded him for his work at
the pot boiler.  But Jan knew the pride of Master Swift's heart too
well to venture to add a half penny to his money, or to spend a half
penny less than all.

It was whilst he was going with an anxious countenance towards the
village shop that Master Chuter met him with open arms.  The little
innkeeper was genuinely delighted to see him; and the news of his
arrival having spread, several old friends (including "Willum"
Smith) were waiting for him, about the yardway of the Heart of Oak.
When the innkeeper discovered Jan's errand, he insisted on packing
up a prime cut of bacon, some new-laid eggs, and a bottle of
"crusty" old port, such as the squires drank at election dinners, to
take to the schoolmaster.  Jan was far too glad of this seasonable
addition to the feast to suggest doubts of its acceptance; indeed,
he ventured on a hint about a possible lack of wine-glasses, which
Master Chuter quickly took, and soon filled up his basket with
ancient glasses on bloated legs, a clean table-cloth, and so forth.

"We needn't say any thing about the glasses," suggested Jan, as they
drew near the cottage.

Master Chuter winked the little eye buried in his fat left cheek.

"I knows the schoolmaster, Jan.  He be mortal proud; and I wouldn't
offend he, sartinly not, Jan.  But Master Swift and me have seen a
deal of each other since you left, and he've tasted this port
before, when he were so bad, and he'll not take it amiss from an old
friend."

Master Chuter was right.  The schoolmaster only thanked him
heartily, and pressed him to remain.  But the little innkeeper,
bustling round the table with professional solicitude, declined the
invitation.

"I be obliged to 'ee all the same, Master Swift.  But I hope I knows
better manners than to intrude on you and Jan just now, let alone a
gentleman on whom I shall have pleasure in waiting at the Heart of
Oak.  There be beds, sir, at your service and Jan's, and well aired
they be.  And I'll be proud to show you the sign, sir, painted by
that boy when he were an infant, as I may say.  But I knowed what
was in un.  Master Swift can bear me witness.  'Mark my words,' says
I, 'the boy Jan be 'most as good as a sign-painter yet.'  And I do
think a will.  But you knows best, sir."

"I feel quite convinced that he will," said the painter, gravely.

Whilst Master Chuter and the artist thus settled Jan's career, he
cooked the eggs and bacon; and when Master Swift had propelled
himself to the table, and the others (including Rufus) had taken
their seats, the innkeeper drew cork, dusted the bottle-mouth, and
filled the fat-legged wine-glasses; then, throwing a parting glance
over the arrangements of the table, he withdrew.

Jan's fears for the credit of his home, his anxieties as to the
effect of the frugal living of his old friends upon the more
luxurious taste of his new patron, were very needless.  The artist
was delighted with every thing, and when he said that he had never
tasted food so good as the eggs and bacon, or relished any wine like
that from the cellar of the Heart of Oak, he quite believed what he
said.  In truth, none should be so easily pleased as the artistic,
when they wish to be so, since if "we receive but what we give," and
our happiness in any thing is according to the mind we bring to it,
imaginative people must have an advantage in being able to put so
much rose color into their spectacles.

Warmed by the good cheer, Master Swift discoursed as vigorously as
of old.  With a graphic power of narration, commoner in his class
than in a higher one, he entertained the artist with stories of
Jan's childhood, and gave a vivid picture of his own first sight of
him in the wood.  He did not fail to describe the long blue coat,
the pig-switch, and the slate, nor did he omit to quote the lines
which so well described the scene which the child-genius was
painting in leaves.

"Well have I named him Giotto!" said the artist; "the shepherd boy
drawing on the sand."

"If ye'd seen the swineherd painting with nature's own tints," said
Master Swift, with a pertinacious adherence to his own view of
things, which had always been characteristic of him, "I reckon you'd
have thought he beat the shepherd boy.  Not that I could pretend to
be a judge of the painting myself, sir; what took MY mind was the
inventive energy of the child.  For maybe fifty men in a hundred do
a thing, if you find them the tools, and show them the way, but not
five can make their own materials and find a way for themselves."

"Necessity's the mother of invention," said the painter, smiling.

"So they say, sir," said the schoolmaster, smartly; "though, from my
own experience of the shiftlessness of necessitous folk, I've been
tempted to doubt the truth of the proverb."

The painter laughed, and thought of the widow, as Master Swift
added, "Necessity may be the MOTHER of invention, sir, but the
father must have had a good head on his shoulders."

The sun had set, the moon had risen, and the dew mixed with kindred
rain-drops on the schoolmaster's flowers, when Jan and the painter
bade him good-by.  For half an hour past it had seemed to the
painter that he was exhausted, and spoke languidly.

"Don't get up till I come in the morning, Master Swift," said Jan;
"I'll come early and dress you."

Rufus walked with them to the gate, and waved his tail as Jan kissed
his soft nose and brow, but then he went back to Master Swift and
lay down at his feet.  The old man had refused to have the door
shut, and he propelled his chair to the porch again, and lay looking
at the stars.  The moon set, and the night grew cold, so that Rufus
tucked his nose deeper into his fur, but Master Swift did not close
the door.


The sun was shining brightly when Jan came back in the morning.  It
was very early.  The convolvulus bells were open, but Rufus and the
schoolmaster still slept.  Jan's footsteps roused Rufus, who
stretched himself and yawned, but Master Swift did not move, nor
answer to Jan's passionate call upon his name.  And in the very
peace and beauty of his countenance Jan saw that he was dead.

But at what hour the silent messenger had come--whether at midnight,
or at cock-crow, or in the morning--there was none to tell.



CHAPTER XXXIX.

GEORGE AGAIN.--THE PAINTER'S ADVICE.--"HOME BREWED" AT THE HEART OF
OAK.--JAN CHANGES THE PAINTER'S MIND.

Master Swift's death was a great shock to the windmiller, who was
himself in frail health; and Jan gave as much time as he could to
cheering his foster-father.

He had been spending an afternoon at the windmill, and the painter
had been sketching the old church from the water-meadows, when they
met on the little bridge near Dame Datchett's, and strolled together
to the Heart of Oak.  Master Chuter met them at the door.

"There be a letter for you, Jan," said he.  "'Twas brought by a
young varment I knows well.  He belongs to them that keeps a low
public at the foot of the hill, and he do be for all the world like
a hudmedud, without the usefulness of un."  The letter was dirty and
ill-written enough to correspond to the innkeeper's account of its
origin.  Misspellings omitted, it ran thus:  -


"MASTER JAN FORD,

"Sir,--If so be you wants to know where you come from, and where to
look for them as belongs to you, come to the public at the foot of
the hill this evening, with a few pounds in your pocket to open the
lips of them as knows.  But fair play, mind.  Gearge bean't such a
vool as a looks, and cart-horses won't draw it out of un, if you
sets on the police.  Don't you be took in by that cusnashun old
rascal Cheap John.  You may hold your head as high as the Squire
yet, if you makes it worth the while of ONE WHO KNOWS.  I always was
fond of you, Jan, my dear.  Keep it dark."


The painter decided to accept the invitation; but when George
Sannel's face loomed out of the smoke of the dingy little kitchen,
all the terrors of his childhood seemed to awake again in Jan.  The
face looked worn and hungry, and alarmed; but it was the face of the
miller's man.  In truth, he had deserted from his regiment, and was
in hiding; but of this Jan and his master knew nothing.

If George's face bore some tokens of change, he seemed otherwise the
same as of old.  Cunning and stupidity, distrust and obstinacy,
joined with unscrupulous greed, still marked his loutish attempts to
overreach.  Indeed, his surly temper would have brought the
conference to an abrupt end but for the interference of the girl at
the inn.  She had written the letter for him, and seemed to take an
interest in his fate which it is hardly likely that he deserved.
She acted as mediator, and the artist was all the more disposed to
credit her assurance that "Gearge did know a deal about the young
gentleman, and should tell it all," because her appearance was so
very picturesque.  She did good service, when George began to pursue
his old policy of mixing some lies with the truth he told, by
calling him to account.  Nor was she daunted by his threatening
glances.  "It be no manners of use thee looking at me like that,
Gearge Sannel," said she, folding her arms in a defiant attitude,
which the painter hastily committed to memory.  "Haven't I give my
word to the gentleman that he should hear a straight tale?  And it
be all to your advantage to tell it.  You wants money, and the
gentleman wants the truth.  It be no mortal use to you to make up a
tale, beyond annying the gentleman."

Under pressure, therefore, George told all that he knew himself, and
what he had learned from the Cheap Jack's wife, and part of the
purchase-money of the pot boiler was his reward.

Master Lake confirmed his account of Jan's first coming to the mill.
He took the liveliest interest in his foster-son's fate, but he
thought, with the artist, that there was little "satisfaction" to be
got out of trying to trace Jan's real parentage.  It was the
painter's deliberate opinion, and he impressed it upon Jan, as they
sat together in Master Chuter's parlor.

"My dear Giotto, I do hope you are not building much on hopes of a
new home and new relatives.  If all we have heard is true, your
mother is dead; and, if your father is not dead too, he has basely
deserted you.  You have to make a name, not to seek one; to confer
credit, not to ask for it.  And I don't say this, Giotto, to make
you vain, but to recall your responsibilities, and to dispel useless
dreams.  Believe me, my boy, your true mother, the tender nurse of
your infancy, sleeps in the sacred shadow of this dear old church.
It is your part to make her name, and the name of your respectable
foster-father, famous as your own; to render your windmill as highly
celebrated as Rembrandt's, and to hang late laurels of fame on the
grave of your grand old schoolmaster.  Ah! my child, I know well
that the ductile artistic nature takes shape very early.  The
coloring of childhood stains every painter's canvas who paints from
the heart.  You can never call any other place home, Giotto, but
this idyllic corner of the world!"

It will be seen that the painter's rose-colored spectacles were
still on his nose.  Every thing delighted him.  He was never weary
of sketching garrulous patriarchs in snowy smocks under rickety
porches.  He said that in an age of criticism it was quite
delightful to hear Daddy Angel say, "Ay, ay," to every thing; and he
waxed eloquent on the luxury of having only one post a day, and that
one uncertain.  But his highest flights of approbation were given to
the home-brewed ale.  That pure, refreshing beverage, sound and
strong as a heart of oak should be, which quenched the thirst with a
certain stringency which might hint at sourness to the vulgar
palate, had--so he said--destroyed for ever his contentment with any
other malt liquor.  He spoke of Bass and Allsopp as "palatable
tonics" and "non-poisonous medicinal compounds."  And when, with a
flourish of hyperbole, he told Master Chuter's guests that nothing
to eat or drink was to be got in London, they took his word for it;
and it was without suspicion of satire that Daddy Angel said, "The
gen'leman do look pretty middlin' hearty too--con-sid'rin'."

It was evident that the painter had no intention of going away till
the pot boiler fund was exhausted, and Jan was willing enough to
abide, especially as Master Lake had caught cold at the
schoolmaster's funeral, and was grateful for his foster-son's
company and care.  Jan was busy in many ways.  He was Master Swift's
heir; but the old man's illness had nearly swallowed up his savings,
and Jan's legacy consisted of the books, the furniture, the
gardening tools, and Rufus, who attached himself to his new master
with a wistful affection which seemed to say, "You belong to the
good old times, and I know you loved him."

Jan moved the schoolmaster's few chattels to the windmill, and
packed the books to take to London.  With them he packed the little
old etching that had been bought from the Cheap Jack.  "It's a very
good one," said the painter.  "It's by an old Dutch artist.  You can
see a copy in the British Museum."  But it was not in the Museum
that Jan first saw a duplicate of his old favorite.

He was nailing up this box one afternoon, and humming as he did so,
-

     "But I alone am left to pine,
      And sit beneath the withy tree,
      For truth and honesty be gone" -

when the painter came in behind him.

"Stop that doleful strain, Giotto, I beg; you've been painfully
sentimental the last day or two."

"It's an old song they sing about here, sir," said Jan.

"Never mind the song, you've been doleful yourself, Giotto!  I
believe you're dissatisfied that we do not push the search for your
father.  Is it money you want, child?  Believe me, riches enough lie
between your fingers and your miller's thumb.  Or do you want a more
fashionable protector than the old artist?"

"No, no, sir!" cried Jan.  "I never want to leave you; and it's not
money I want, but" -

"Well, my boy?  Don't be afraid."

"It's my mother, sir," said Jan, with flushed cheeks.  "My real
mother, I mean.  She didn't desert me, sir; she died--when I was
born.  I doubt nobody sees to her grave, sir.  Perhaps there's
nobody but me who would.  I can't do any thing for her now, sir, I
know; but it seems as if I hardly did my duty in not knowing where
she lies."

The painter's hands were already deep in his loose pockets, from
which, jumbled up with chalk, india-rubber, bits of wash-leather,
cakes of color, reed pens, a penknife, and some drawing-pins, he
brought the balance of his loose cash, and became absorbed in
calculations.  "Is that box ready?" he asked.  "We start to-morrow,
mind.  You are right, and I was wrong; but my wish was to spare you
possible pain.  I now think it is your duty to risk the possible
pain.  If those rascally creatures who stole you are in London, the
police will find them.  Be content, Giotto; you shall stand by your
mother's grave!"



CHAPTER XL.

D'ARCY SEES BOGY.--THE ACADEMY.--THE PAINTER'S PICTURE.

The Ammabys were in London.  Amabel preferred the country; but she
bore the town as she bore with many other things that were not quite
to her taste, including painfully short petticoats, and
Mademoiselle, the French governess.  She was in the garden of the
square one morning, when D'Arcy ran in.

"O Amabel!" he cried, "I'm so glad you're alone!  Whom do you think
I've seen?  The boy you called Bogy.  It must be he; I've looked in
the glass, and oh, he IS like me!"

"Where did you see him?" asked Amabel.

"Well, you know I've told you I get up very early just now?"

"I wish you wouldn't tell me," interrupted Amabel, "when you know
Mademoiselle won't let me get up till half-past eight.  Oh, I wish
we were going home this week!"

"I'm very sorry, Amabel, but do listen.  I was down by the river,
and there he was sketching; and oh, so beautifully!  I shall burn
all my copies; I can never draw like him.  Amabel, he is AWFULLY
like me, and he must be very near my age.  He's like what people's
twin-brothers are, you know.  I wish he were my twin-brother!"

"He couldn't be your twin-brother," said Amabel, gravely; "he's not
a gentleman."

"Well, he's not exactly not a gentleman," said D'Arcy.  "However, I
asked him if he sent his pictures to the Academy, and he said no,
but his master does, the artist he lives with.  And he told me his
master's name, and the number of his pictures; and I've brought you
a catalogue, and the numbers are 401, 402, and 403.  And we are
going to the Academy this afternoon, and I've asked mamma to ask
Lady Louisa to let you come with us.  But don't say any thing about
me and the boy, for I don't want it to be known I have been out
early."

At this moment Mademoiselle, who had been looking into the garden
from an upper window, hastened to fetch Amabel indoors.

It was between three and four o'clock in the afternoon, and the
Academy was crowded.  The crush was so oppressive that Lady Adelaide
wanted to go away, but D'Arcy had expressed a wish to see No. 401,
and D'Arcy's wishes were law to his father, so he struggled in
search of the picture, and the others followed him.  And when a
small crowd that was round it had dispersed, they saw it quite
clearly.

It was the painter's PICTURE.  As the other spectators passed, they
spoke of the coloring and the draughtsmanship; of the mellow glow of
sunshine, which, faithful to the richness of southern summers,
carried also a poetical hint of the air of glory in which genius
lives alone.  To some the graceful figure of Cimabue was familiar,
but the new group round the picture saw only the shepherd lad.  And
if, as the spectators said, his eyes haunted them about the room,
what ghosts must they not have summoned to haunt Mr. Ford's client
as he gazed?

"Mais c'est Monsieur D'Arcy!" screamed the French governess.  And
Amabel said, "It's Bogy; but he's got no leaves."  Lady Adelaide was
quite composed.  The likeness was very striking, but her maternal
eyes saw a thousand points of difference between the Giotto of the
painting and her son.  "How very odd!" she said.  "I wonder who sat
for the Giotto?  If he really were the boy Amabel thinks she saw in
the wood, I think her Bogy and the model must both be the same as a
wonderful child Mr. Ammaby was telling me about, who painted the
sign of the inn in his village; but his father was a windmiller
called Lake, and" -

"Mamma! mamma!" cried D'Arcy, "papa is ill."

The sound of his son's voice recalled Mr. Ford's client to
consciousness; but it was a very partial and confused consciousness.
He heard voices speaking of the heat, the crush, etc., as in a
dream.  He was not sure whether he was being carried or led along.
The painting was no longer before him, but it mattered little.  The
shepherd boy's eyes were as dark as his own; but that look in their
upward gaze, which stirred every heart, pierced his as it had moved
it years ago from eyes the color of a summer sky.  To others their
pathos spoke of yearning genius at war with fortune; but for Mr.
Ford's client they brought back, out of the past, words which rang
more clearly in his ears than the condolences of the crowd, -

"You'll remember your promise, D'Arcy?  You will be quite sure to
take me home to bury me?  And you will call my child after my
father,--JAN?"



CHAPTER XLI.

THE DETECTIVE.--THE "JOOK."--JAN STANDS BY HIS MOTHER'S GRAVE.--HIS
AFTER HISTORY.

As he had resolved, the painter secured the help of the police in
tracing Jan's pedigree.  He did not take the bow-legged boy into his
confidence, but that young gentleman recognized the detective
officer when he opened the door for him; and he laid his finger by
his snub nose, with a wink of intense satisfaction.

On hearing the story, the detective expressed his opinion (founded
on acquaintance with Sal) that George's pocket had been picked by
his companions, and not by chance thieves in the fair; and he
finally proved his sagacity in the guess by bringing the pocket-book
and the letter to the artist.

With his mother's letter (it had been written at Moerdyk, on her way
to England) before them, Jan and the artist were sitting, when Mr.
Ford's client was announced, and Jan stood face to face with his
father.

The gentle reader will willingly leave a veil over that meeting,
which the artist felt a generous shame to witness.  With less
delicacy, the bow-legged boy had lingered outside the door, but when
the studio rang with a passionate cry,--"My son! my son!"--he threw
his green baize apron over his head, and crying, "The jook!" plunged
downwards into the basement, and shed tears of sympathy amongst the
boots and bottles.

To say that Lady Adelaide forgave the past, and received her
husband's son with kindness, is to do scant justice to the generous
affection which he received from her.  With pity for her husband
mingled painful astonishment that he should have trusted her so
little; but if the blow could never be quite repaired, love rarely
meets with its exact equivalent in faith or tenderness, and she did
not suffer alone.  She went with Jan and his father to visit Master
Lake, and her gracious thanks to the windmiller for his care of her
step-son gave additional bitterness to her husband's memories of the
windmill.

It was she who first urged that they should go to Holland.  Jan's
grandfather was dead,--Mr. Ford's client could make no reparation
there,--but the cousin to whom the old wooden house now belonged
gave Jan many things which had been his mother's.  Amongst these was
a book of sketches by herself, and a collection of etchings by her
great-grandfather, a Dutch artist; and in this collection Jan found
the favorite of his childhood.  Did the genius in him really take
its rise in the old artist who etched those willows which he had
once struggled to rival with slate-pencil?

His mother's sketches were far inferior to his own; but with the
loving and faithful study of nature which they showed, perhaps, too,
with the fact that they were chiefly gathered from homely and
homelike scenes, from level horizons and gray skies, Jan felt a
sympathy which stirred him to the heart.  His delight in them
touched Lady Adelaide even more than it moved his father.  But then
no personal inconvenience in the past, no long habits of suffering
and selfishness, blunted her sense of the grievous wrong that had
been done to her husband's gifted son.  Nor to him alone!  It was
with her husband's dead wife that Lady Adelaide's sympathies were
keenest,--the mother, like herself, of an only child.

Mr. Ford's client went almost unwillingly to his wife's grave, by
the side of which her old father's bones now rested.  But Jan and
Lady Adelaide hastened thither, hand in hand, and the painter's
pledge was redeemed.  Since the old man died, it had been little
tended, and weeds grew rank where flowers had once been planted.
Jan threw himself on the neglected grave.  "My poor mother!" he
cried, almost bitterly.  For a moment the full sense of their common
wrong seemed to overwhelm him, and he shrank even from Lady
Adelaide.  But when, kneeling beside him, she bent her face as if
the wind that sighed among the grass stalks could carry her words to
ears long dulled in death,--"My POOR child!  _I_ will be a mother to
your son!"--Jan's heart turned back with a gush of gratitude to his
good stepmother.

He had much reason to be grateful:  then, and through many
succeeding years, when her training fitted him to take his place
without awkwardness in society, and her tender care atoned (so she
hoped) for the hardships of the past.

The brotherly love between Jan and D'Arcy was a source of great
comfort to her.  Once only was it threatened with estrangement.  It
was when they had grown up into young men, and each believed that he
was in love with Amabel.  Jan had just prepared to sacrifice himself
(and Amabel) with enthusiasm to his brother, when D'Arcy luckily
discovered that he and the playmate of his childhood were not really
suited to each other.  It was the case.  The conventionalities of
English society in his own rank were part of D'Arcy's very life, but
to Amabel they had been made so distasteful in the hands of Lady
Craikshaw that her energetic, straight-forward spirit was in
continual revolt; and it was not the least of Jan's merits in her
eyes that his life had been what it was, that he was so different
from the rest of the people amongst whom she lived, and that the
interests and pleasures which they had in common were such as the
world of fashion could neither give nor take away.

Withheld from sacrificing his affections to his brother, Jan joined
with his father to cut off the entail of his property.  "D'Arcy is
your heir, sir," he said.  "I hope to live well by my art, and GOD
forbid that I should disinherit Lady Adelaide's son."

His great gift did indeed bring fortune as well as fame to our hero.

The Boys' Home knows this.  It has some generous patrons (it should
have many!), and first amongst them must rank the great painter who
sometimes presides at its annual festival, and is wont on such
occasions pleasantly to speak of himself as "an old boy."

More accurately entitled to that character is the bow-legged man-
servant of another artist,--Jan's old master.  These two live on
together, and each would find it difficult to say whether pride and
pleasure in the good luck of their old companion, or the never
healed pain of his loss, is the stronger feeling in their kindly
hearts.

Amabel was her father's heir, and in process of time Jan became the
Squire, and went back to spend his life under the skies which
inspired his childhood.  But his wife is wont to say that she
believes his true vocation was to be a miller, so strong is the love
of windmills in him, and so proud is he of his Miller's Thumb.

At one time Mr. Ammaby wished him to take his name and arms, but Jan
decided to keep his own.  And it is by this name that Fame writes
him in her roll of painters, and not by that of the old Squires of
Ammaby, nor by the name he bore when he was a Child of the Windmill.



CHAPTER XLII.

CONCLUSION.

A south-west wind is blowing over the plains.  It drives the
"messengers" over the sky, and the sails of the windmill, and makes
the dead leaves dance upon the graves.  It does much to dispel the
evil effects of the foul smells and noxious gases, which are
commoner yet in the little village than one might suppose.  (But it
is a long time, you see, since the fever was here.)  It shows the
silver lining of the willow leaves by the little river, and bends
the flowers which grow in one glowing mass--like some gorgeous
Eastern carpet--on Master Swift's grave.  It rocks Jan's sign in
mid-air above the Heart of Oak, where Master Chuter is waiting upon
a newly arrived guest.

It is the man of business.  Long has he promised to try the breezes
of the plains for what he calls dyspepsia, and the artist calls
"money-grubbing-on-the-brain," but he never could find leisure,
until a serious attack obliged him to do so.  But at that moment the
painter could not leave London, and he is here alone.  He has not
said that he knows Jan, for it amuses him to hear the little
innkeeper ramble on with anecdotes of the great painter's childhood.

"This ale is fine," says the man of business.  "I never can touch
beer at home.  The painter is married, you say?"

"He've been married these two year," Master Chuter replies.  "And
they do say Miss Amabel have been partial to him from a child.  He
come down here, sir, soon after his father took to him, and he draad
out Miss Amabel's old white horse for her; and the butler have told
me, sir, that it hangs in the library now.  It be more fit for an
inn sign, sartinly, it be, but the gentry has their whims, sir, and
Miss Amabel was a fine young lady.  The Squire's moral image she be;
affable and free, quite different to her ladyship.  Coffee, sir?
No, sir?  Dined, sir?  It be a fine evening, sir, if you'd like to
see the church.  I'd be glad to show it you, myself, sir.  Old
Solomon have got the key."

In the main street of the village even the man of business strolls.
There is no hurrying in this atmosphere.  It is a matter of time to
find Old Solomon, and of more time to make him hear when he is
found, and of most time for him to find the key when he hears.  But
time is not money to the merchant just now, and he watches the
western sky patiently, and is made sleepy by the breeze.  When at
last they saunter under the shadow of the gray church tower, his eye
is caught by the mass of color, out of which springs a high cross of
white marble, whose top is just flushed by the setting sun.  It is
of fine design and workmanship, and marks the grave where the great
man's schoolmaster sleeps near his wife and child.  Hard by, Master
Chuter shows the "fever monument," and the names of Master Lake's
children.  And then, as Daddy Solomon has fumbled the door open,
they pass into the church.  The east end has been restored, the
innkeeper says, by the Squire, under the advice of his son-in-law.

And then they turn to look at the west window,--the new window, the
boast of the parish,--at which even old Solomon strains his withered
eyes with a sense of pride.  The man of business stands where Jan
used to sit.  The unchanged faces look down on him from the old
window.  But it is not the old window that he looks at, it is the
new one.  The glory of the setting sun illumines it, and throws
crimson lights from the vesture of the principal figure--like stains
of blood--upon the pavement.

"It be the Good Shepherd," Master Chuter explains, but his guest is
silent.  The pale-faced, white-haired angels in the upper lights
seem all ablaze, and Old Solomon cannot look at them.

"Them sheep be beautiful," whispers the innkeeper; but the stranger
heeds him not.  He is reading the inscription:  -

                    To the Glory of GOD,
     And in pious memory of Abel, my dear foster-brother:
                I, who designed this window,
                        Dedicate it.

           HE shall gather the lambs into His arms.




Footnotes:

{1}  Windmiller's candlesticks are flat candlesticks made of iron,
with a long handle on one side, and a sharp spike on the other, by
which they can be stuck into the wall, or into a sack of grain, or
anywhere that may be convenient.  Each man who works in the mill has
a candlestick, and one is always kept alight and stationary on the
basement floor.

{2}  The blue marks on the hands of a miller who "sets" his own
stones are called in the trade the "miller's coat of arms."




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